‘Three years of my life I gave that case,’ Gail said. ‘Trawled through oceans of paperwork and never got anywhere near a court. That’s the trouble with those type of cases. The Crown just doesn’t have the time, the money or the inclination to see them through to trial.’
I knew what she meant. Most prosecutors knew as much on the intricacies of carousel fraud as they did about how to fill in a legal aid form. And who wanted to run a trial for several months and at great expense, only to lose on the verdict of a bored and confused jury?
We sat down facing the big window looking out over the bleak, greyness of the Clyde and the city beyond. ‘What do you know about Tantalite?’ I took a sip of coffee from a foam cup, aware that my questioning was straying too far from the casual.
Gail didn’t answer, just snapped a chocolate biscuit in half and dunked it.
I tried again. ‘Ever come across a friend of Devlin’s? Rupert? Big, red-faced guy. Dead posh?’
‘I didn’t think Devlin had any friends. Lots of enemies mind you.’ Gail expertly popped the soggy, yet structurally intact, piece of chocolate biscuit into her mouth and chewed for a moment. ‘All right, Robbie. what’s up?’
‘This Rupert guy came to see me the other day and said he was Devlin’s representative.’
‘A lawyer?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘What did he want?’
I couldn’t say too much. ‘He said Devlin had made a fortune out of mining for some kind of rare African mineral.’
‘Tantalite?’
‘That’s what he said. Ever heard of the stuff?’
Gail disposed of the second half of the biscuit in like manner to the first. ‘I know you either love it or you hate it. No, wait, that’s Marmite,’ she laughed, displaying a set of chocolaty front teeth. ‘Sounds to me like you’ve been a victim of a prank, Robbie old son.’ Finishing her coffee, she reached for her court gown. ‘Seriously, Robbie. No offence, but if Victor Devlin was looking for legal advice, I think he’d come to see me - personally - not send a rep to see you. Me and Victor go way back. I can remember when he was making fortunes on dodgy endowments in the eighties. I know—’
‘Where the bodies are buried?’
‘Not exactly, but I do have directions to the cemetery.’ She licked the chocolate off her teeth, dabbed gently at her lipstick with a paper tissue and smiled. ‘No, what I was going to say was that I know there are angry people out there who’d love to get a piece of Victor Devlin. He’s ruined a lot of lives. Right now I’d be surprised if he was even in the country. You need to watch you don’t get suckered into doing something crazy.’
I took her advice with a shrug and we chatted some more. Shortly before ten the room cleared in a flurry of black gowns heading for the various courts throughout the building and I left for Queen Street station to catch the Edinburgh bound train.
I arrived at Waverley Station about half eleven and as I climbed the New Steps to the Lawnmarket, I wondered why Rupert, whoever he was, would pose as Victor Devlin’s representative? What was on the memory-stick? What had happened to it? He’d been so keen to recover the thing and then when he had the chance to talk to me in London, he didn’t even raise the subject.
The more I thought about my trip to Devlin’s coastal hideaway, the more I thought it strange that, if Rupert really believed the cottage to be under surveillance, he’d chosen me. Why not someone who might actually get away with it? I had umpteen clients who would have done a better break-and-entry job and for a lot less money than I’d been offered. I mean twenty grand? What was it Gail had said? You need to watch you don’t get suckered into something crazy.
Sound advice. But possibly too late.
Chapter 18
Mobile phone reception was poor in the High Court, so I stood on the pavement outside and phoned Suzie. She sounded pleased to hear from me. I couldn’t help remembering the hotel room, her naked body and what might have happened, but for Jill’s unexpected early arrival. I had a lot to ask her and no time to do it in, so we arranged to meet the following day after the preliminary hearing.
In the advocates library on the second floor, Fiona Faye, my perennial first choice QC, was sitting at the highly-polished mahogany table in the centre of the room. She was reading the only Hello magazine amidst a forest of Scotsman and Herald newspapers.
‘About time,’ she said, when she saw me homing-in on the coffee-making facilities.
‘You having one?’ I asked, pouring coffee into one of the white porcelain cups on the sideboard.
‘There’s no time for coffee, Robbie, we were supposed to be meeting the Advocate Depute at eleven-thirty. It’s quarter to twelve.’ Where’s your client?’
Prosecuting counsel was Cameron Crowe, my second favourite prosecutor in the world; my first favourite being all the others. Meetings with Crowe were never happy affairs and for the moment my client was best kept out of his reach.
‘Not coming,’ I said, sipping with unnecessary caution on a lukewarm brew.
‘How can he sign an affidavit if he’s not here?’
‘He can’t,’ I said. ‘But he can be brow-beaten into agreeing a deal by Cameron Crowe, which I don’t think will be in his best interests. So I’ve told him to stay away and leave the bargaining to the experts. There will be plenty of time to sign before the preliminary hearing tomorrow, if we can get a reasonable deal out of the Crown.’
A not so merry member of the band of junior counsel trudged into the room and tossed his wig onto the table. He had the face of a man who’d literally lost his appeal. Fiona called over to him. ‘Jamie, be a doll, nip along to the AD’s room and let him know I’ll be there in five minutes. Something unexpected has cropped up.’
The junior rolled his eyes, about turned and left the room. Fiona came over and poured herself a coffee. She looked at my cup. ‘Did you pay for that?’ Without waiting for a reply and assuming, correctly, that my answer would have been to the negative, she dropped some coins onto a saucer that was heaped with loose change.
‘So, tell me,’ she said. ‘What, in the eyes of Robbie Munro, would be a reasonable deal?’
I finished my coffee in one swig and set down the cup and saucer. ‘If Starrs gives evidence he should walk.’ Suzie was right. I was Robbie Munro. What kind of deal was it for one of my clients to plead guilty to one charge just because the Crown agreed to drop another they hadn’t a snowball’s chance of proving?
‘Seriously? The Crown is offering to drop the murder charge and you want them to drop the attempt to defeat charge as well?’
‘Why not? There’s no way they can prove the murder against Starrs,’ I said.
‘Robbie,’ Fiona slipped effortlessly into the tone that had softened the granite heart of many a High Court Judge. ‘You’ve done a great job so far, but we both know that the only reason this deal is on is because Cameron Crowe wants to be a judge and the road to a red jersey is paved with high profile convictions. Somehow you’ve managed to persuade him that the Crown’s best chance for a conviction is to go against Dominic Quirk alone and use Starrs as a witness. That’s what I call a result for your client. Don’t force Crowe’s hand. If the Prince of Darkness runs the pair of them to trial he might just win. It’s a thin case, and you can never tell with a jury. Never mind the evidence, a girl has been killed and there’s a couple of rich boys in the dock.’
‘Starrs isn’t rich. He’s on legal aid, remember?’
‘He’s at St Andrews Uni and a pal of Dominic Quirk. So far as the jury will be concerned he’s a stuck-up kid.’
I thought it over. I knew what juries were like, but Crowe also knew what Fiona Faye’s and Big Jock Mulholland’s jury-speeches were like. With that pair acting for the two accused, anything was possible. ‘If my client is going to grass on his pal, he deserves something for it and several years on the protection wing at Shotts isn’t what I had in mind.’
‘Helping to dispose of a body is a serious crime. This isn’t the J
P Court and a charge of fly-tipping.’ One sip of cool coffee was enough for Fiona. She put her cup down beside mine on the sideboard.
The depressed junior counsel arrived at her side, back from passing the message of our delay. ‘Any more little jobs for me?’ he asked. ‘Spot of lion-taming? Crocodile-wrestling?’
‘AD growing a tad impatient?’ Fiona asked.
‘You could say.’
‘Sorry, about that, Jamie,’ Fiona said. ‘Have a coffee on me.’ She gestured to her discarded cup. ‘I’ve only just poured that.’ She turned to me. ‘I’m not happy about this, Robbie. I’ve more or less told Crowe the whole thing is a done deal. Have you bothered to ask your client for his views? These aren’t your dice to roll.’
When I wanted my client’s opinion I’d give it to him. This was high stakes poker and I didn’t want my client throwing his hand in while he was holding all the aces. ‘Why should he plead guilty to the only thing the Crown can actually prove? I don’t call that reasonable.’
‘It’s reasonable because otherwise there is a risk, slight though you think it may be, of his being convicted of murder.’
I disagreed. ‘No, there’s got to be give and take. The Crown give Starrs a walk and they get to take Dominic Quirk off on a life sentence.’
‘Got it all worked out, haven’t you?’
I liked to think so.
Fiona sighed. ‘Come on then. Better not keep his Lordship-to-be waiting.’
Chapter 19
To my mind, wanting to be a judge should have been a bar to judicial appointment, but, scarily, there was a real danger that one day Cameron Crowe Q.C. would be granted his most fervent wish. You could count on the fingers of a leper’s hand the number of Scotland’s top defence Q.C.’s who had been elevated to the Bench and, yet, for a Lord Advocate, the offer of a red silk robe and horsehair wig were as guaranteed as the copper-bottomed, publicly-funded pension.
Yes, there was nothing the Judicial Appointments Board looked for more in a candidate than a keenness to prosecute and so, after the briefest of stints at the defence bar, Crowe had returned to Crown Office as a depute to the Lord Advocate, Scotland’s top prosecutor, a man kept busy clamping-down on crime, providing his definition of crime coincided with that of the redtop newspapers and a posse of politically correct pressure groups.
When Fiona and I walked into his room, Crowe was sitting spider-like in a large leather armchair. He successfully fought off the urge to give us a welcoming smile and with a wave of a bony hand, gestured towards some chairs in a corner.
‘Your client not here?’ Crowe asked, after Fiona and I had dragged over and sat down on two chairs that were considerably smaller and a lot less well upholstered than the AD’s own.
Fiona said nothing, just tilted her head at me.
‘I’ve read over the draft affidavit. Seems fine,’ I said. ‘Starrs will sign once we’re all quite clear on what’s to happen to him.’
‘I am clear,’ Crowe said. ‘Crystal in fact.’
‘Robbie thinks the lad should walk,’ Fiona said, before I had the chance.
Crowe’s brows met. ‘Walk? Walk where? Walk free?’
‘He talks the talk, you let him walk,’ I confirmed.
‘I don’t think setting it to a rap track is going to help,’ Fiona said to me out of the corner of her mouth.
Crowe screwed up his face as though having difficulty picturing my client without steel bars in the foreground. ‘But he’s guilty. He helped dump the murder victim. When they caught him his hands were still dirty. He’s admitted it.’ Crowe banged the top of his desk with a fist, making a row of pens jump about. ‘I know I’m only Queen’s Counsel, but in what way does that make him not guilty?’
I had to concede that there were certain unhelpful adminicles of evidence; however, Crowe was missing the point. I put it as simply as I could. ‘In return for you dropping both charges, he gives you Dominic Quirk on a plate. He’s happy, you’re happy, the dead girl’s family is happy, most of all the Lord Advocate and the Daily Record are happy. In fact only Dominic Quirk is unhappy and that’s really what you want isn’t it?’
Crowe leaned across at me, teeth like daggers, hands clasped on the desk top, knuckles whitening. ‘But I’ve already agreed to drop the murder,’ he said through clenched teeth.
‘I know. Because you can’t prove it. Not exactly deal of the century is it? You might as well chuck in a charge of treason and say you’ll drop that too.’
Crowe sat back in his chair. He unclasped his hands, donned a pair of reading glasses, picked some sheets of paper from the desk and began to read. After a short time he lowered the sheets of paper, raised his spectacles and stared at us as though surprised we were still there. He stretched his lips, revealing no ivory.
‘So, is that agreed then?’ I asked.
Crowe returned his gaze to the sheets of paper and flicked one over. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, eyes not leaving the page. ‘See you in court.’
Fiona put a hand on my arm and squeezed. When she stood up, I did too. I crossed the room with her expecting we’d be called back the moment we reached the doorway, like a couple of tourists given a Moroccan market-seller the old walk-away routine. The call never came.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Fiona said, as we parted company at the top of the stairs.
‘He’s just playing hard to get.’
Fiona wasn’t so sure. ‘I think we better consult with the client first thing, before the preliminary hearing. I’ll let you explain to him what just happened.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Mark Starrs has every faith in me. He’ll understand.’
Chapter 20
‘You did what!’
Mark Starrs was not cut out for a life of crime. For a start there was his hair. Red is never a good colour for a criminal; the ginger is always ID’d. Then there was his fondness for the sound of his own voice. Maybe that was why he had decided to study drama, but there was a time and a place for monologuing; Macbeth act two, scene one? Fine. St Andrews police station when detained on a murder charge? Not so fine. Is this a confession I see before me? You bet it is.
Leaving aside his propensity for talking to police officers, Starrs was a polite young man, respectful and happy to take my advice. I liked him. His parents were a different matter. They’d split-up many years before. Mr Starrs senior now lived in Glasgow, Mrs Starrs in Perth with their only child. There had been two or three procedural diets so far along the way. One or other of my client’s parents always came along for those appearances, usually Mr Starrs, who, though easier to deal with, was generally very angry about something. The polar-opposite was my client’s mother. With Mrs Starrs around, understandably worried though she was, it was difficult to fit a word in sideways and, when I did, it was only because she was having one of her panic attacks and I’d have to repeat myself over and over again before she could understand what was happening.
For that reason, when the whole constellation of Starrs arrived in Edinburgh that Wednesday morning, for the preliminary hearing in Her Majesty’s Advocate against Dominic Quirk and Mark Starrs, I left both anxious parents in the Lower Aisle café below St Giles Cathedral, while I escorted my client across the road to the High Court. The hearing wouldn’t take long. Better for Mr and Mrs Starrs to stay where they were and have a coffee and one of Edinburgh’s finest fruit scones rather than run the gauntlet of press photographers and TV cameras. It also allowed me to speak to their son alone and explain why he wouldn’t be pleading guilty to an attempt to defeat the ends of justice that morning and why he still faced a murder charge.
‘But you said it was a done deal. Last time we met you said I’d plead guilty to helping Dominic dispose... get rid...you know... and they’d drop the murder charge. What went wrong?’
Fiona in full battlefield regalia: crisp silk gown, high necked white blouse with pearl buttons, cleared her throat, but didn’t speak. We were standing on the first floor landing, solici
tors and advocates, punters and clerks crisscrossing this way and that around us. In another corner, the Quirks: father and son, Paul Sharp and the towering figure of Jock Mulholland Q.C. stood discussing their defence. If they’d managed to find one.
‘It’s like this, Mark,’ I said. ‘The Crown needs you to prove the case against Dominic. If you keep schtum, they’ve got nothing.’
Fiona gave another little cough.
‘Well... Not very much.’
‘But it could be enough?’ Starrs said.
‘Possibly against Dominic. I just can’t see a sufficiency of evidence against you.’
‘But if it goes to trial, even if I’m found not guilty of murder, I’m still going to be found guilty on the other charge, so what’s the point?’
Fiona studied the pristine white paintwork of the high ceiling.
‘It won’t come to that,’ I said. ‘Once the AD has applied his very small but vindictive brain to the issues, he’ll realise he needs you and do what we ask. After all, it’s only reasonable. What kind of deal would it be if you gave the Crown what they wanted but they didn’t give you what you wanted?’
Starrs remained unconvinced. ‘I was happy with the deal we had. I told you that. I’m twenty-two next month. I can do a couple of years in jail. I can’t do life.’
I shook my head. ‘If the AD wants to play hardball, so can we. If things work out, you won’t be going to jail at all.’
‘You mean that?’
The look of hope in his eyes made me feel suddenly nauseous. ‘Yes. If all goes to plan.’
He turned to Fiona who at that moment was finding something fascinating about the three vertical abstract tapestries, hanging on the exterior wall of courtroom three. ‘Really? No prison?’
Crime Fiction (Best Defence series Book 5) Page 9