‘He’s been buzzing about my office, wanting to know about Sean’s case,’ I said. ‘Tells me he’s a friend of the family—’
Betty snorted, and looked away.
‘Betty. Do you know why Frankie is so interested in Sean? If there’s anything you think I should know then, please, tell me.’ I reached out, gently took the tray of biscuits from her and laid it down on the coffee table. ‘Whatever you say will be in strict confidence. I’ll not say a word.’ I reclined into the comfortable armchair and bit the tip off a petticoat tail.
Betty thought about it for a moment or two and then asked, ‘have you seen Sean lately?’ Whatever she had on Frankie, it wasn’t for my ears.
‘I was out to see him in prison a few days ago,’ I said, turning to the real reason for my visit. ‘He said something about a package that his dad had asked him to give to me. I was thinking he might have had it the night… the night Mr Abercrombie died.’
Betty shook her head. ‘The police have already been here asking about that. The night they came for him, Sean had hardly been in the house five minutes and he never had any package.’
‘Could look in his room just to make sure?’
‘Be my guest,’ Betty said. ‘But the police turned this place upside down. They lifted the carpets, made holes in the walls. One of them went up the loft and put a foot through the dining room ceiling. They even took the toilet apart.’ Her laughter broke down into helpless sobbing. I waited. The tears stopped as quickly as they had started. She smiled at me, her face streaked, eyes puffy. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m fine now. Come on, I’ll show you Sean’s room.’
Betty was right. I needn’t have bothered. The bedroom was not how I imagined it would have been on the night the police arrived. Now the bed was stripped, the carpet gone and there were clean square patches on the walls where posters had been removed. The walls were pretty thick but the room must have been sub-divided at some time and a series of holes had been cut in the plasterboard of the partition for a look inside. The few items not taken away - one or two books, some CDs and other odds and ends - were inside a cardboard box on top of a chest of drawers on the far side of the room next to a curtainless window. There was nothing there to interest me.
‘Is there anywhere else he might have hidden something important?’
Betty gave a dry little laugh. ‘They were through here like a plague of locusts. They found an earring of mine that had been missing for years down the back of a radiator. Believe me. If there was ever any important package, the police have got it now.’
Betty wanted some fresh air and said she’d walk me back to my car. The trip had been a waste of time. To make matters worse, I had stayed longer than intended and was sure my parking ticket had expired. I could see from a distance that there was a small piece of paper under one of the windscreen-wipers of Andy’s car. When we got to it, I was relieved to find it was only a flyer for a Chinese restaurant in Leuchars. I lifted the wiper, pulled out the piece of paper and was screwing it up when a splat of white landed on the bonnet, narrowly missing my hand. One of the problems with living on the coast – bloody seagulls.
‘They say it’s lucky,’ Betty called to me.
The amount of times I got shat on in the average year, I had to be the luckiest person alive. I stared into the sky, trying to fix the culprit with an evil eye, but there were no seagulls in sight, only a solitary pigeon sitting overhead on a lamppost.
Chapter 40
I still wasn’t keen on going home. Rather than endanger my dad any further and not wanting to waste any more cash on a hotel, I decided to bunk down at the office.
I went into my room and flopped on the couch, worried and yet at the same time pleased with my day’s work. I had the package at last. The pigeon may have missed me but its inaccurate defecation had proved lucky nonetheless. It had reminded me of Sean Kelly’s fondness for the birds and inspired me to take a look inside the pigeon loft I’d noticed situated in Betty Kelly’s back garden. The boy was to be congratulated for an excellent choice of hiding place I thought as I placed on my lap a small canvas satchel.
I’d found the satchel lying in a corner, presumably where Sean had thrown it the night he came home from Max’s office, but at some point in the past it must have been secured to the interior structure of the pigeon loft, the roof joists perhaps, for there was a row of puncture holes in the fabric, frayed and tinted orange with rust. Other than those perforations and some encrusted pigeon poop it showed little sign of wear and tear.
I undid the straps. My desk was a mess of files and papers, so I cleared a space on the couch and emptied the contents out on to it. The first things I saw were two clear plastic bags each sealed with sticky tape, one containing a ball of black leather. I poked at it with a finger. It fell apart into a pair of gloves, scrunched up and stiff. The other bag held a crushed-up white cotton shirt. It was stained with dark patches here and there. Blood. I put both items to the side and turned to the second object: a faded blue cardboard folder, tied with red legal tape.
I opened the folder carefully. Inside were several A4 size black and white photographs, individually wrapped in cellophane bags and, like the bags containing the clothes, sealed with sticky tape that was yellow and brittle with age. One of the bags didn’t contain a photo; only a single sheet of good quality writing paper folded in half.
I took a paper tissue and used it to hold them up to the light one at a time, while I studied the photo inside each. The first showed two men standing outside a restaurant on a busy city street. The picture had been taken through a telescopic lens. There was a blur of traffic in the foreground but the subjects were in sharp focus. I recognised only one of the two: an elderly man, tall with a slight stoop, his hawk-like profile more used to jutting from beneath a horse-hair wig than a skipped cap. He was dressed casually, no red and white silk smock on this occasion, his arm draped around the shoulder of the other, much younger male.
The remaining photographs had been taken in a hotel room and were of a more intimate nature. The quality was grainy, the shots taken in poor light with fast film but showed unmistakably the same two men from outside the restaurant one of whom was clearly Lord James Hewitt of Muthill, former Lord Justice Clerk.
Once more I thought back to my Glenochil trip and the conversation with Chic Kelly.
According to the dead housebreaker it had been an early August evening in two thousand and one when, fresh from a pigeon meet, he’d walked into his local to discover that Frankie McPhee had been looking for him all afternoon. No-one who enjoyed breathing kept Frankie waiting, so Chic had gone straight round to see him. Frankie was furious. He’d wanted Chic for an urgent job and been forced to make other arrangements. Chic wasn’t told the details, but gathered that things had not gone to plan. Frankie gave him a shotgun and a canvas bag and told him not to show face again until he’d got rid of the stuff.
Anxious to make amends Chic agreed, but being something of a connoisseur in stolen goods couldn’t fail to admire the rather interesting antique shotgun he’d been handed. Next day, the death of the Lord Justice Clerk was all over the news. The police were everywhere. When Frankie was pulled in for questioning, Chic got scared. He panicked and was caught trying to off-load the shotgun; there being honour amongst thieves but apparently not amongst fences.
Found in recent possession, his prints all over the murder weapon, a long history of housebreakings behind him, Chic’s only defence to the charge of murder was to explain how he’d come by the gun. He’d have to impeach Frankie McPhee: he didn’t; a life sentence being preferable to a death sentence. That was Chic’s version of events. Chic, it had to be remembered, was mildly insane at the time he’d recounted it to me and now he was dead; however, one thing was clear in my mind: the satchel was the package Sean Kelly and Max had quarrelled about on the night of my friend’s murder. I could understand a solicitor of Max’s integrity wishing to have nothing to do with the stuff or for me to get involved.
I couldn’t think of any reason the young man would shoot Max because of that or why he would have gone to the office with a gun. It didn’t make sense. What did make sense was that if Chic had been telling the truth, for once, and the package could prove Frankie McPhee had killed Lord Hewitt, then, surely, there was only one person prepared to kill for it. After all, who else would want some dirty photos of a dead judge? Blackmail was a little too late so far as Lord Hewitt was concerned.
Of course, there was the reward money to consider. After all, that had been Chic’s reason for bringing the package to light after all these years: to leave behind a financial bequest for his family. Had someone else in prison got wind of Chic’s plan and sent word to the outside? Had Max really been killed for the measly twenty-five grand reward put up by the Government all those years before? It was possible. People were killed for a lot less.
Carefully, I opened the final bag and removed the piece of paper. Holding it steady with the tissue, I gently unfolded it to reveal a few letters and numbers written in a precise, distinct and perfectly legible hand: ED01011276. I recognised it straight away as a case reference: one from a prosecution initiated at the Procurator Fiscal’s office in Edinburgh. The ED for the court district, 01 the year and it was case number 11276.
I put the photos and note back in the blue folder and the clothes and the folder back into the canvas bag which I then placed in the big bottom drawer of my desk. I couldn’t see how the items in the canvas bag incriminated Frankie McPhee or anyone else for the murder of Lord Hewitt. I could easily have come to the conclusion that Chic was a sad demented man were it not for the fact that Max must have been murdered for a reason and the contents of the satchel were all I had to go on.
I lay back on the couch to think. My eye was drawn to the print-out of Max’s diary lying on my desk. I began to thumb through. He had been a busy man. The print-out contained hundreds of entries: appointments, notes to himself, reminders, bring-backs, telephone numbers. I lay down on the couch and adjusted the lamp. It was going to take a while.
I awoke early next morning with my head lying at an awkward angle and my left arm dangling off the side of the couch. The diary print-out lay across my chest; I hadn’t got past the first page. I rubbed the back of my neck and stood up slowly, stretching the seized muscles in my back. I needed caffeine.
Down at the café, I made Sandy’s day by settling my tab with the remains of my rainy day cash. The team from Jay Deez were gathered for a pow-wow at their usual corner table, discussing the future of the salon. By the sound of things Butch had completed the grieving process and was chairing the meeting. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.
I placed my order, pulled up a seat and began to go through the print-out. I was engrossed in my work when Sandy materialised at my side and placed a mug of coffee and a bacon roll on the table.
I inspected the roll. Exterior: lightly toasted. Interior: melted butter, extra-crispy bacon, plenty of brown sauce.
‘How come you’ve not been back to see us, Robbie?’ Butch shouted over to me as I took a bite of roll.
‘Been dead busy,’ I said, amidst crunching shards of best Ayrshire and returned my attention to the print-out, searching for a clue that might lead me closer to Max Abercrombie’s killer. I continued to scan the schedules until I came to the day of Max’s death. My dad had been right: Sean Kelly’s name was in the diary. He had a five o’clock appointment on the very the day Max was shot. The purpose of his visit, so Sean said, was to deliver a package to me. According to the Crown, his purpose was to gun down my friend in cold blood.
The coffee and roll were long scoffed by the time, working backwards from the date of Max’s death, I reached November. The last entry for the thirtieth said simply, ‘Boxing Night.’ There were two phone numbers beside it: one a landline, the other a mobile. I was sure the former was the number of The Red Corner Bar. I called to confirm. The barman answered and I hung up. I turned my attention to the mobile number, recalling Brendan’s comments about ‘the girls’ and having a good time.
If I dialled I might get Brendan, who’d be packing his Lanzarote-bound suitcase, or, if my suspicions were correct, the female who’d accompanied Max that night. I was sure that person was not Irene Abercrombie.
I clicked the numbers into my phone. Faintly, I heard a ring-tone I recognised: the Age of Aquarius, the theme from Hair. It grew louder then stopped.
‘Hello?’
I heard the voice in stereo.
‘Hello?’
I turned my head slowly in the direction of the voice and there at the next table saw Butch sitting with his ex-boss’s pink mobile phone pressed to his ear.
CHAPTER 41
Monday morning and it was business as usual. I was due in Glasgow Sheriff Court at ten and traffic on the M8 was nose to tail.
At a quarter to ten I abandoned Andy’s car in a side street at the Gorbals, not far from The Citizens Theatre. I didn’t even attempt the court car park. The chance of finding a space after nine-thirty was about the same as the Sheriff being sympathetic if I were ten seconds late - theoretically possible but not bleeding likely.
I pushed through the revolving door into the perpetual half-light of the Sheriff Court. Through the cold and cheerless lobby I went up the stairs to the agents’ room where I dumped my coat. Gowned-up I descended to the basement where, outside court three, I was met by my client, John Calder, a young man from Falkirk, looking smart if uncomfortable in suit and tie and accompanied by most of his immediate family.
John’s problems had started three months before when he’d gone for a night out in Glasgow with some friends from work. Sometime in the wee small hours, drunk and separated from his workmates, he’d found himself in a nightclub far from home and in the company of strangers. Had John not sunk enough lager to float a canoe he might have paid more heed to the growls of the locals. As it was, there’d been a shove, a spilled drink and before the bouncers could step in, one of John’s attackers had a second smile, courtesy of a pint glass: the drinking man’s sabre.
At his trial John pled self-defence. In Scots Law, self-defence requires the presence of three elements. Firstly, the accused must believe himself to be under threat. Secondly, he must do everything within reason to avoid the use of force, even if it means running away. Thirdly, the force used must not be excessive.
Persuading a jury to accept that those criteria existed in John’s case would not have been a great problem. The average Glasgow juror is sufficiently street-wise to know that when one is eyeballed in a pub by three young men from Springburn, it’s safe to assume that they’re not admiring one’s coiffure. As for the other two criteria, well, running away from a fight and using only moderate force simply don’t compute.
The Crown hadn’t fancied its chances with a jury and so had cut its losses by reducing the prosecution from solemn to summary procedure. In doing so they reduced the potential jail term from five years to twelve months but the prospects for conviction were much higher if the trial proceeded before a Sheriff alone. Sheriffs understood well the legal test for self-defence and seldom had any first-hand knowledge of hostile encounters with young men fuelled up on Stella and disco biscuits.
Three weeks after the trial I was back for John’s sentencing. In mitigation I tried to persuade the Sheriff that there had been a degree of provocation and watched as my pleas bounced off him like machine gun bullets from Superman’s vest. Shortly afterwards I was bidding my client adieu. With standard half remission he’d be out in six months. That news didn’t cheer his mum who gave me pelters before being dragged off by the rest of the away support.
I felt like wrapping my head in a wet towel and lying down in a darkened room. What I did was go for a walk to try and collect my thoughts so that I could piece together a strategy for Sean Kelly’s defence. I gave Grace-Mary a call as I was strolling back across Jamaica Bridge on my way to the car and asked her to book me an appointment at Polmont.
‘No need,’ she sa
id. ‘You’re sacked.’
A letter had come in that morning written on thick-lined prison paper, accompanied by a mandate from Lorna Wylie ordering me to forward her the case papers.
‘Oh and that reporter phoned again,’ Grace-Mary said. ‘I told him you’d give him a call when you got back.’
I hung up, leaned against the railing and looked back at the big grey building erected on the banks of the Clyde like a tombstone to justice.
‘Robbie Munro, how the hell are you?’ Gordon Devine seemed to have developed the habit of sneaking up behind me.
‘I’m fine. Just taking a moment to watch the salmon leap.’
He blinked several times in a row. ‘And I’ll bet if you fell in you’d come out with one in your pocket.’
‘You think so? Tell that to my client who’s just been launched for twelve moons.’
‘Come off it. A not proven on that Heimlich manoeuvre defence? Pretty spawny even for you.’
Gorgeous Gordon had ears everywhere.
‘It’s not all luck,’ I said. ‘In fact sometimes I don’t bother with bridges, I walk across the water.’
Devine glanced over his shoulder towards the bustling city centre where old stone buildings rubbed grimy shoulders with steel and glass structures that reflected the greyness of the sky. ‘You worked here once. Don’t you miss it? The history, the architecture, the people - so friendly, so—’
‘Mental?’
‘If there was no crime we’d be out of a job and this is where the action is.’
‘I’m a small town boy and right now I’ve pretty much got my hands full, thanks.’
‘Tell me about it. The crime business – it’s always booming. By the way...’ Devine fired-off a volley of blinks. ‘When’s Max Abercrombie’s murderer going to trial?’
‘That’s something you’d need to ask his new lawyer.’ I didn’t like admitting that I’d been given the heave-ho, but with his contacts he probably knew already and was just on the wind-up.
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