Crime Fiction (Best Defence series Book 5)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  As Minty risked another bite, Paul drained the last of his coffee. He either had an asbestos-coated mouth or took his extra-milky because I’d hardly started mine. He looked at his watch. ‘Got to go,’ he said, grabbing his gown and file. ‘See you, Minty, catch you later, Robbie.’

  ‘Busy man,’ Minty said. ‘Glad someone is.’

  ‘What did you mean about being pleased to see me and Paul still on speaking terms?’ I asked.

  ‘I was kidding. I know you two are pals. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.’ He put a straight index finger across his top lip and sat up straight. ‘I voss only following orders,’ he said in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘You’ve really got that Welsh accent off pat,’ I said. ‘But, really. What are you talking about?’

  ‘The big case.’ By this time Minty was crunching through the toastie like the Third Reich through northern France circa 1940. ‘I was talking to Jock Mulholland yesterday afternoon, trying to instruct him in a murder. Dead straight forward, just an assault that went a bit wrong, but he wouldn’t touch it. He’s taking no new instructions until you and Paul’s case is over.’

  I already knew that Quirk’s father had insisted the Q.C. take on no other work.

  ‘Nearly broke his heart turning me down. You know what Big Jock’s like,’ Minty said. ‘Usually charging all over the place, running two trials at a time, leaving his juniors to do all the work and if you’re lucky he might actually turn up to do the jury speech. Makes it up as he goes along half the time.’

  ‘Seems to work for him,’ I said.

  Minty nodded on agreement, pulling a piece of toastie away from his mouth, trying to sever stretchy strings of cheese at the same time. ‘Jock told me you’ve lodged a section seventy-eight and are going to incriminate Quirk.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I was just kidding about you and Paul not being on speaking terms.’

  ‘Big Jock tell you anything else about the case – or did he put an advert in the paper?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Robbie. Just chat between lawyers. You know how it is, but if you’d rather not talk—’

  ‘What was he saying?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just that the trial was going ahead. I was hoping there might have been a plea and I could have instructed him in my case.’ Minty washed down the last morsel of toastie with a long drink of tea and placed the mug on his head.

  The girl from behind the counter came over, took it from him and patted his hair. ‘You all right Minty, pet? Want me to phone your mum next time and get her to come and blow on your din-dins?’

  ‘Did Jock say anything else?’ I asked, after Minty had waved her away.

  ‘Not really. I’d describe him as quietly confident.’

  ‘Doubt it,’ I said. ‘Dominic Quirk’s defence team has nothing to be confident about, quietly or loudly.’

  Minty shrugged. ‘All I wanted to know was if Jock would be available. He’s not available until after your trial is out of the way. He said he thought at one point there might have been some kind of deal organised, his client pleading to a culpable homicide or something, but that because of a recent development the case was a definite runner. You and Paul will know better than me if that’s right.’

  New developments? Paul might know what they were, but I didn’t. Come to think of it, where was Paul rushing off to in such a hurry? He’d knocked back that cup of coffee like he was dousing a fire in his stomach.

  One of Minty’s junkie clients came into the café, wanting to speak to him about a warrant for an unpaid fine - like there was any other kind of fine.

  I stood up and collected my things. Maybe I could catch Paul in the agents’ room before he left. As I made my way to the door, I looked out of the window and saw him leaving the court building at a trot. Whatever it was that made Big Jock Mulholland quietly confident, I wasn’t about to find out from his instructing solicitor anytime soon.

  Chapter 23

  The electronic age had dawned slowly on the average criminal defence lawyer, who, while forced to do certain administrative tasks on-line, still depended largely on dead trees for the day-to-day practice of law. iPads, laptops and USB sticks were all very well, but sometimes you needed a piece of paper to wave at somebody and that’s why I kept case files.

  When the doors to Munro & Co. first opened, I had a fairly orthodox filing system: every new case was given its very own plain, buff-coloured folder with the client’s name on the front. It was simple, but, I thought, effective. Grace-Mary saw room for improvement. Soon, summary cases were put into pale blue folders, solemn into red and the old buff folders were reserved for miscellaneous bumph. The problem was that sometimes we ran out of certain colours.

  Friday morning, my secretary stomped into my room. ‘I wish you’d stop doing this.’

  At the time I didn’t know what she was going on about, and too busy filling-in yet another legal aid form to bother looking up at her.

  ‘Robbie, you know this is a pet hate of mine,’ she said, not really narrowing things down. My secretary had so many pet hates she could have started her own zoo. I kept on completing the form until a blue folder was shoved on top of it and under my nose.

  ‘Writing ‘This is a Red Folder’ on a light blue file doesn’t actually change its colour,’ Grace-Mary said. ‘How am I supposed to carry out a proper file check if the colours are all wrong?’

  She dropped the file on my desk. It was the new correspondence folder I’d opened for Mark Starrs because the first was bursting at the seams. The most recent addition was the recently-served section 67 notice, intimating the Crown’s latest witness: Clyve Cree. I wondered - was he the new development Big Jock had been talking to Minty about? Who was he, apart, that is, from someone whose parents couldn’t spell? His address was given as c/o St Andrews police station, to where the initial report concerning dead Doreen had been made. I checked with Grace-Mary. The new witness’s police statement had not yet arrived via the Crown’s secure email system. I had to find out what he was saying.

  For those who couldn’t afford a defence the Scottish Legal Aid Board existed. It was supposed to place an accused on the same footing as the prosecution, to ensure an equality of arms and uphold the right to a fair trial to which every accused was entitled under the European Convention of Human Rights. In actual fact SLAB was a government quango, established with the best of intentions no doubt, but now staffed with hordes of civil servants who never darkened the door of a courtroom, but liked to tell those who did how to run a trial - though not how to do it on a rate of pay that hadn’t increased in two decades.

  In any legally-aided High Court case, the defence, if it was to be properly prepared, had to be subsidised by the defence solicitor, for the fees payable would be funny if the issues not so serious. Take for example Clyve Cree. I knew the Crown would be disclosing the witness’s police statement in due course, but those were notoriously inaccurate, full of witnesses egressing from public houses and ambulating in north-westerly directions. I needed to sound this guy out for myself, hear what he had to say in his own words, not in police speak. The trouble was I simply couldn’t afford a round trip of one hundred and twenty miles to the East Neuk of Fife; not when I had other business in court that day and not for a legal aid fee of twelve pounds per hour and a mileage rate fixed by someone who didn’t know the price of running a car or who did, but didn’t like lawyers.

  There were two calls I had to make. The first was to the PF’s High Court unit. It went surprisingly well. The second, I was sure, would be more difficult.

  ‘But, Robbie, it’s half-eleven on a Friday morning...’

  My dad had correctly identified the time and date. It was that kind of factual accuracy, developed through years of policing, that made him the ideal man for the job. That and the fact that he wasn’t getting paid. ‘All you have to do is—’

  ‘And you know very well that I have a two o’clock four-ball on a Friday afternoon.’

&nbs
p; ‘So what? Put it back a couple of hours. All you do is drive to St Andrews, take the statement and home again. I’ve tee’d up the appointment,’ bad turn of phrase, ‘for the start of the shift at one forty-five. You know where the cop shop is don’t you?’

  ‘Robbie—’

  ‘While you’re there you might even have time to look around the new whisky shop on South Street. Bound to have some interesting stuff in stock.’

  ‘The answer is—’

  ‘Of course, I’m not sure if they’ll stock the Black Bowmore...’ I’d played my ace. I waited. And waited.

  ‘I want petrol money.’

  ‘Legal aid rates, forty pence a mile,’ I said. ‘It’s got to be nearly eighty miles there and back.’

  ‘More like a hundred.’

  ‘Done. Now get here as soon as you can so I can fill you in.’

  Chapter 24

  Never mind the one o’clock gun; no cannon shot was required to tell me when it was 5 pm each day. At one minute to, Grace-Mary’s coat was on, at one minute past you’d have needed a bloodhound to find any lingering traces of my secretary in the offices of Munro & Co.

  At twenty to five that Friday afternoon, I was in reception with Grace-Mary who was trying to talk me through the new on-line banking system, when my dad marched in.

  ‘All you have to remember is your customer ID and password and you can authorise payments from anywhere,’ she said.

  I wasn’t really that big on sending money to people. Why, if I ever had the notion, I’d want to do it from somewhere other than the comfort of my own office, I didn’t know. I let it slide and turned my gaze from the computer monitor to my dad. ‘I thought you’d be on the golf course giving your handicap its weekly work out.’

  ‘Golf? Are you kidding? It was roadworks all the way from Auchtermuchty. This is me just back.’ My dad rubbed his lumbar region and grimaced. ‘There’s no chance of me swinging a club this weekend.’

  ‘I’ll have Grace-Mary notify the PGA straight away,’ I said. ‘Now where’s the statement?’

  ‘Never fear...’ My dad tapped his forehead. ‘It’s all in here.’

  ‘Well get it all out of there and slap it onto a piece of paper. Do you think SLAB’s going to pay me for an imaginary precognition?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll write something out for you later. First things first.’ He approached the reception desk, hand held out. ‘Forty quid, please. I should be charging you more considering the amount of time I spent in traffic jams and nothing on the radio except for teuchtar music or Gardeners’ Question Time.’

  Before I could say anything, Grace-Mary had mined the petty cash box and was counting out four tenners into my dad’s enormous outstretched mitt. ‘There you are, Mr Munro. Now why don’t you come back nice and early Monday morning, tell me all about it and I’ll type something up for Robbie?’

  ‘No thanks. I’ve wasted enough time on this without traipsing in here again next week.’ My dad folded the cash into his wallet and returned it to his back pocket. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘there’s good news and there’s bad news.’ He looked around for a seat.

  Grace-Mary came from behind the reception desk and pulled a chair over.

  My dad nodded his thanks, sat down and made a painful show of crossing one leg over the other. ‘The good news is that they abolished the death sentence back in the sixties. The bad news is that this guy Clyve Cree is going to sink your client faster than Armitage Shanks. Okay...’ he said, clearly warming to his task, ‘the details. Cree seems a nice enough bloke, widower, late-thirties, tall and built like a brick sh...’ He smiled at Grace-Mary who was looking up at a clock that showed fifteen minutes to the weekend. ‘Like a brick chicken house. He’s ex-Army, got no previous and now works in security, nightclubs, personal protection. Not a guy you’d want to mess with. In fact—’

  ‘Did you get a note of his shoe size?’ I asked.

  ‘Funny.’

  ‘Then get a move on, Dad. It’s Friday. I have a life and Jill will be—’

  ‘In Switzerland this weekend,’ Grace-Mary said. ‘Do you read any of the notes that I leave on your desk?’

  What was she going to Switzerland for, again? I reached into my pocket for my mobile phone. A few months back, Sheriff Brechin hadn’t taken kindly to a brief rendition of The Clash’s ‘I fought the Law’ during the PF’s speech in a domestic breach, and even though I’d never thought Crown submissions strictly necessary to secure a conviction from Bert Brechin, there had been talk of a finding of contempt if a ring-tone of mine was heard again. I knew nothing would give him greater pleasure than to convict both accused and defence lawyer at the one sitting, and, so, since then my phone had been constantly on silent for fear of further musical interludes.

  I checked the phone display: two missed calls. One was from Jill. A small cassette icon on the display indicated a live voice mail message. Great. Another weekend with Jill working.

  ‘Next time you speak to her, remember and tell her about my idea for the favours. I know a guy who knows a guy whose brother used to work for Diageo and can get his hands on a staff discount card. He can get some decent miniatures for—’

  I let the phone drop with a clatter onto the desk. ‘Would you stop banging on about whisky for five minutes, Dad?’

  ‘It’s your wedding I’m talking about. Someone’s got to show an interest.’

  Grace-Mary clapped her hands together. ‘That’s enough, the pair of you.’ She turned to my dad. ‘Mr Munro, if you’ll just tell me what the witness said, I’ll jot it down in shorthand and type it up later.’

  My dad acceded to her suggestion with a grunt.

  Grace-Mary turned to me. ‘And Robbie...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Put a sock in it.’ My secretary took a clean sheet of paper from the desk drawer and poised a sharp-pointed pencil over it.

  My dad began his narrative. With a little prompting from Grace-Mary he had Cree’s statement summed-up in under five minutes.

  Easter Saturday, Cree was on a night out with friends in St Andrews. He wasn’t drinking because he was working the following day and had brought the car. The pub had been full of noisy students playing drinking games and he’d left early, using his early start the next morning as an excuse. His car was parked outside the Byre Theatre, and walking back to it around about eleven o’clock he took a short-cut. He couldn’t remember the name of the side street; however, he did recall coming across an argument between what he described as a couple of teenagers: a male and a female. He’d thought about intervening but it was over before he could do anything. After the argument the couple had driven off in a blue BMW M3 convertible. Strange enough, but what really stuck in his mind was that he heard the ginger-headed boy say to the girl: ‘I’m warning you. If you go near Dominic again, I’ll kill you.’

  Apparently, Clive with a Y had thought Dominic an unusual name. The incident had stuck in his mind and then he’d read about the case in the newspaper. Two days before the preliminary hearing, he had dropped into St Andrews’ police station and provided a statement.

  Dropped in and dropped a bomb on Mark Starr’s defence.

  The phone rang. My secretary answered and listened for a moment. ‘It’s Zoë,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ It took a moment or two for that information to sink in. ‘You mean Zoë, Zoë?’

  Grace-Mary nodded.

  Zoë, Munro & Co.’s former receptionist and one time love of my life, had emigrated to Australia three years before, taking a piece of my heart with her.

  ‘What’s she wanting?’ My dad growled. He knew exactly who she was.

  ‘What does she want?’ I whispered to my secretary.

  ‘To speak to you.’

  ‘Well he’s not going to speak to her,’ my dad said in a voice that scarcely needed telecommunications to be heard in Australia.

  ‘Ask her to call back,’ I said

  ‘Tell her not to bother,’ my dad said.

  If Grace-Mary
looked up at the clock again, she’d wear the face off it. I wondered - what time was it in Australia? Five in the morning or thereabouts I guessed. Had to be important if Zoë was calling so early, but I couldn’t speak to her; not with my dad there. Even the most polite chat with my ex-girlfriend would be tantamount to adultery in his eyes.

  ‘Say I’m not here,’ I instructed my secretary. ‘Take a number and I’ll call her later.’

  My dad’s aching back seemed to have loosened off. He stood up and pushed his face, moustaches all a bristle, into mine. ‘No you will not!’

  Grace-Mary removed her hand. ‘Hang on a sec, Zoë.’ She jabbed a finger at me and then at the door and mouthed, ‘get out.’

  ‘Sorry Zoë, Robbie must have left.’ I heard Grace-Mary say from my position standing outside in the corridor. ‘I can’t see him.’

  I returned to reception once the good-byes had been said and the handset replaced. ‘Did I really have to step outside so you couldn’t see me?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ Grace-Mary stood. ‘And don’t bother giving me that look. You don’t pay me enough for what I do, far less to tell lies for you as well.’ She lifted her handbag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘Zoë is looking for a new job.’ My dad’s face reddened, his eyes began to bulge. ‘She wonders if you’ll give her a reference and so I told her of course you would. She’ll call back next week sometime.’ From under her desk, my secretary collected a few carrier bags full of groceries. I was pleased to see that she’d found time, during all the work she wasn’t being paid enough to do, for a spot of shopping.

  My phone illuminated and began to judder on the desk.

  Grace-Mary smiled reassuringly at my dad. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Munro, Zoë and Robbie—’

  ‘Ancient history,’ I said, snatching up my mobile in case it was Jill. It wasn’t. It was Suzie. I stuffed the phone into my pocket.

  ‘There’s only one woman in Robbie’s life,’ my secretary said, and, lifting her carrier bags, walked out of the door as the town clock struck five.