Crime Fiction (Best Defence series Book 5)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  ‘And could you?’ I asked.

  ‘I gave her the best betting tip ever. I told her gambling was for mugs and that if she didn’t believe me I could show her around my big house and give her a hurl in my Bentley. The girl started to cry. So did the baby. I was about to close the door in their faces when my wife took pity. She told the girl that if she promised never to gamble again, I’d refund her losses. The girl agreed and my wife made sure I kept to the promise she’d made for me. It was only a couple of grand. I never saw her again until the trial.’

  The priest had led those praying off to a more peaceful area and we now had the nave to ourselves.

  ‘You don’t think what you did influenced her evidence in any way?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘What was I supposed to do? And what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  Al Quirk glanced again at his ingot of a wristwatch. My audience was almost over. ‘You thought you knew what Sophie Pratt was going to say, you told my son on a number of occasions that she was the biggest problem for the defence and yet when she changed her story you didn’t bother to ask why. No. She took the stand, she took the oath, my son was acquitted, you never objected, just took a large fee.’ He curled an arm around my shoulder in a friendly, but very firm, grip. ‘And it was money well spent, Mr Munro. You see, I’m an investor in people. My on-line gambling business is run by people who know what they are doing.’ He spread the fingers of his other hand and pressed it against his chest. ‘What do I know about the internet? I’m nearly seventy. I can’t write software or design a web-site. When I was at school computers were science fiction and email came on long strips of paper that were only good for chucking out of New York skyscrapers at returning astronauts. Whether it’s business, justice or old bones, I keep my input purely financial. Everything else I leave to the experts.’

  The priest reappeared, hovering all-smiles in the background. Al released me, gave the man in black a regal wave and led me back out into a dreich Edinburgh afternoon. At the sight of us leaving the building, the Bentley eased out of from between the traffic cones and rolled to a halt. By the time we’d reached the foot of the steps, the chauffeur, big and fat, grey uniform, peaked cap, mirrored sunglasses, had come around and opened the back door. ‘If you fear someone is going to bear false witness, Mr Munro, that’s terrible, but you’re going to have to point your finger at someone else.’ Al Quirk pushed his face close to mine. ‘Either that or tell your client to do the decent thing and admit he’s the murderer.’

  Chapter 33

  Thankfully, it seemed like word of my break-up was not yet public knowledge. If anyone would have known about it, it would have been Jill’s friend, Kaye Mitchell, editor of the local newspaper, and, yet, when I met her at Sandy’s she never mentioned it. While we were waiting for our respective bacon rolls, I discovered by way of some discreet questioning, that Kaye was hoping to persuade Jill to give the Linlithgow Gazette an exclusive interview on the opening of the Zanetti technology park at Lasswade. They would be meeting up soon for an interview, probably when Jill next came up from London. I decided that was when I would strike and knew I’d have to make the most of the opportunity. No point in me hammering Jill with more reassurances that what had happened in the London hotel room had been a lot of talking and even more snoring. She needed to hear it from Suzie too.

  Sadly, the latter had gone completely off radar. I tried Suzie’s number for the umpteenth time as I wandered up the Royal Mile and before I entered the mobile-phone dead-zone that was the High Court. Still no answer. My messages already had to be into double figures, so I left it at that and was shoving my phone back into my pocket when I saw Mark Starrs’ father standing outside the front door of the Lawnmarket building, looking worried and staring down the High Street at me.

  ‘Mark not here yet?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘When is this all going to end?’ He tossed his head at the posse of journalists and cameras that had taken up position outside the big bronze door of the High Court building. ‘I’m not sure how much more I can take of this circus.’

  I didn’t like to tell him that this was nothing compared to the media spotlight that would shine down on his boy once the trial eventually kicked-off for real.

  ‘The lads at work are being all right about it,’ he said. ‘Most of them. But I know what they’re all thinking and maybe they’re right. Maybe I should have stayed with Mark’s mum, for his sake. A boy needs a role model, someone to look up to. I never thought I’d see the day when a son of mine—’

  ‘Mark didn’t kill that girl,’ I said. ‘He was stupid and took his friendship with Dominic Quirk too far, that’s all. We both know he’s not a murderer. There’s nothing you could have done to change what happened. Remember that.’

  He looked at me, his chin jutting out a little further than before. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet. There’s a lot of work to be done. First of all we have to find Mark. Then we’ll walk him past those cameras like the innocent man he is. No skulking about or hiding. Where is he anyway?’

  Mr Starrs checked his watch. ‘I told him to meet me here at half-nine. It’s quarter to ten. I better give his mum a phone and see if there’s a problem.’

  Mr Starrs found his phone. The battery was dead. I gave him mine. ‘I hope he hasn’t done something stupid,’ he said, pressing the numbers. ‘I thought he was going to cut some kind of a deal, do a few years, come out and make a fresh start. But when he came back from seeing you the other day, I sensed he’d lost hope and... Hello?’ Mr Starrs pressed the mobile phone to his ear. ‘Where am I? I’m outside the court with the lawyer. Where’s Mark?’

  After some listening Mr Starrs handed my phone back to me. ‘He’s in his bed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His mum says he was out for a few drinks last night, came home late and when she tried to wake him this morning he said it was all right and that he didn’t have to come to court today.’

  ‘How long will it take him to get here?’

  Mr Starrs thought for a while as though I’d asked him to calculate a return trip to Mars.

  ‘He’ll need to get up and dressed, take a bus to the train. I suppose he could take a taxi and then... What times are the trains from Perth?’

  ‘I pushed the phone at him. Call him and tell him to be here as soon as possible, if not sooner. I’ll go and let counsel know that Mark’s having transport difficulties or something, and see if we can have the hearing put off until later today or even continued another week.’

  Defence counsel was less than receptive to my suggestion.

  ‘The case is calling at ten. It’s a peremptory diet,’ Fiona said, adjusting her wig, putting just the right amount of tilt on it, ‘and your client is on bail. The best I can do is get word to the clerk and see if he’ll hold the case back.’ She pushed past me. ‘They won’t give him more than half an hour. There only is one other preliminary hearing today and it’s a knock-on that will take about five minutes.’

  Half an hour wasn’t going to be enough time. While Fiona went off to speak to the Clerk, I went downstairs to the lobby and found Mr Starrs. Taking my phone from him, I took it outside so that I could receive a signal and pressed the last number called. No answer.

  ‘What happens now?’ Mr Starrs asked when another attempt to call his son went equally unanswered.

  I told him the best outcome would be a continuation, the worst, and most likely, being a straight to jail warrant. With that, I returned to the advocates’ room. Fiona wasn’t there, so, while I waited, I drank a cup of coffee and caught up with the back pages. The football season was well over, but there was plenty of transfer speculation. In Scotland the football didn’t stop just because there was no-one playing.

  Fiona returned in ten minutes, wig in hand, face like thunder. ‘Did you know about this, Robbie?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About your client doing a runner?’
r />   ‘A runner?’

  ‘I spoke to Cameron Crowe and told him we had problems. He sent the cops round to his house. He wasn’t there. His mum said he’d slept in and that after you’d phoned he got up and ran out of the house. She doesn’t know if he’s coming to court or not.’

  ‘Of course he’s coming to court,’ I said.

  ‘You know that do you? For certain? Or is that another Robbie Munro assumption?’ Fiona launched her wig onto the middle of the big central table. ‘Traffic difficulties.’ She went over to the sideboard, poured herself a coffee and took a sip. ‘Do you know how it would have looked if I’d stood up in court and told the judge that and later it was found out your client couldn’t be bothered to drag himself out of bed to get to court on time?’

  The speaker in the ceiling announced the calling in Court Three of Her Majesty’s Advocate against Dominic Quirk and Mark Starrs. Fiona collected her wig from the table and gave it a light dusting with the back of her hand. ‘Let’s go and get this over with.’ She took another mouthful of coffee, positioned her wig and, duly chastised, I followed her out of the door, down a flight of steps and into court. It took the judge less than a minute to grant the Crown an apprehension warrant for my client. As soon as Fiona sat down, Jock Mulholland was on his feet as though the two counsel were on either end of the same see-saw. As predicted, unlike Paul, Dominic Quirk’s senior counsel had not felt any ethical urge to withdraw from proceedings merely because of his client’s change of defence. It was funny how ethics varied from person to person and, usually, inversely with the hourly rate of pay.

  Big Jock confirmed Quirk’s plea of not guilty. ‘There anent...’

  ‘Here it comes,’ Fiona whispered.

  ‘I lodge a section seventy-eight notice.’ Quirk’s Q.C. passed a sheet of paper to the clerk and asked the macer to distribute a copy of the incrimination notice to the Advocate Depute and myself.

  It was not unexpected. Quirk’s defence had done an about-turn and was going to use Clyve Cree’s evidence to impeach my client.

  With the announcement that Quirk’s defence was ready for trial, his senior counsel sat down again and, across the well of the court, Cameron Crowe rose slowly to his feet. One accused nowhere to be seen, the other with a new and excellent line of defence, Crowe looked like a vampire out for blood and dished-up a black pudding.

  ‘I think your Lordship will appreciate the difficult situation in which the Crown finds itself,’ he said. ‘Until such time as the first accused is apprehended, I don’t think it would be prudent to fix a diet of trial.’ He suggested another preliminary hearing in a fortnight’s time by which time, hopefully, my client would be collared.

  Jock Mulholland murmured his disagreement. His instructing solicitor’s pony-tail swished this way and that as he looked from the Advocate depute across the table, to his client in the dock and up to the bench.

  ‘I hear what you say, Mr Crowe, but there are obvious time-bar issues here,’ the judge said. One of the problems with successfully opposing bail was that the Crown had to be ready to start the trial within one hundred and forty days. Dominic Quirk was already well into triple figures, and the further delay occasioned by yet another preliminary hearing before fixing a trial would stretch the time limit to the maximum.

  The judge looked down to his left. ‘Any thoughts, Mr Mulholland?’

  Defence counsel turned to Pony-tail, who got up and went over to the dock. After a brief conversation with his client, he returned and passed on instructions.

  ‘I sympathise with the situation the Crown finds itself in,’ Big Jock said unsympathetically. ‘However, it was Mr Crowe who insisted that this hearing be marked as final, and a further two week delay means another fourteen days in prison for my client, with no guarantee that his co-accused will be apprehended or that we will be any nearer to fixing a trial date.’

  Cameron Crowe stared across the table at me as though I were somehow to blame for the whole predicament. What would he do? Fix a trial and hope for the best? The judge wouldn’t take kindly to a motion to adjourn made on the morning of the trial on the grounds that Mark Starrs was still on the run, and, yet, without my client, Crowe knew it would no longer be a cut-throat defence. Only one accused would be left holding a knife, and Jock Mulholland Q.C. would know how to wield it. The chances were that Dominic Quirk would be acquitted.

  I was positive my client would be caught in a matter of days if not hours. Would Crowe risk it?

  ‘M’Lord, I’m moving to desert this case pro loco et tempore,’ he said, eventually. The courtroom buzzed while spectators tried to work out what the AD meant by that.

  ‘Mr Mulholland?’ the judge enquired.

  Quirk’s counsel could hardly object. A desertion, literally at this place and at this time, meant the case was dropped temporarily, but could be resurrected by the Crown in due course. It meant that instead of the balance of one hundred and forty days, they had one year, minus Quirk’s time on remand, to try him. The downside was the accused’s immediate release on bail.

  The court rose, the judge was led off, Dominic Quirk punched the air and his parents, like most of the other onlookers, watched in stunned silence wondering what had just happened.

  Fiona went off to change. I left the building and stood at the front door. Like a lawn spewing forth earthworms after a rain shower, news reporters emerged from the court, wriggling and jostling their way up the Royal Mile to where Dominic Quirk hugged his father and weeping mother.

  Soon, Nic Hart, pony-tail blowing freely in the wind, oozed onto the scene to face the TV cameras and magnanimously accept full credit for his client’s release.

  Fiona materialised at my side. ‘What do you want me to do with the bundle?’ she asked. With the grant of a non-appearance warrant, counsel and solicitor could render their fees. I suggested that she hold off and hang onto the papers meantime. I had no idea what Mark Starrs was playing at, but I still suspected it wouldn’t be a case of if, but, rather, when we saw our mutual client again. Only the next time he’d be behind prison bars.

  ‘Hard to believe,’ isn’t it?’ she said, watching the Quirk family reunion. ‘Just a few weeks ago he was in jail, without a defence. Now look at him. A free man. And I’ll bet even his dad wouldn’t give you odds against an acquittal.’

  Chapter 34

  ‘You’re back early,’ Grace-Mary said, when I returned from the High Court and trudged into the office around mid-day. ‘Everything go okay?’

  I explained that everything had gone very not okay, on account of our client failing to trap.

  From my desk phone I tried Mark Starrs’ home number.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable, you’ve got a custody at Stirling,’ Grace-Mary shouted through to me.

  No answer yet again from my client. There wasn’t much I could do except wait for his arrest. ‘Any other calls?’ I yelled, sifting through the mail on my desk. I didn’t bother to sit down, I’d be off again in a couple of minutes.

  ‘Your brother was looking for you and Zoë phoned again.’

  Zoë. Blast. I’d meant to get in touch about her reference.

  ‘You didn’t actually believe all that did you?’ Grace-Mary asked.

  I left the morning mail and went through to reception. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The other day when Zoë called, it was personal. I couldn’t very well say that in front of your dad, he was bad enough when he thought it was business.’

  ‘Personal. How personal?’

  Grace-Mary put in her earphones and started to bash out a letter. ‘Personal enough for me to know not to ask.’

  ‘Really?’

  Grace-Mary stopped typing. ‘All right. Personal enough for her not to tell me.’

  ‘Have you still got her number?’

  Grace-Mary had written it down on a yellow-sticky and stuck it to the frame of my computer screen in time-honoured fashion. I went through, peeled it off and, having decided to phone when I got back from cour
t, and after Grace-Mary had left for the day, headed out of the office and proceeded in a northerly direction.

  Court security systems in Scottish courts are by-passable only by those in the know or by students of history. I punched in the requisite four digit memorable date at the door to the cells, wandered through to the interview rooms adjacent to courtroom two and having announced my arrival via a squawky intercom, waited for my latest client to be brought from his cage. He was sixteen years of age and charged with a breach of the peace. It was an exceedingly minor matter, but, unfortunately for him, in the course of the disturbance he was alleged to have called someone ‘a poof’. That made it a homophobically aggravated. offence. That made it zero-tolerance. That made it a prosecution. In a bizarre reversal of ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me’ the Scottish Government let violent offenders roam the streets with impunity, but call someone a bad name and you could expect the full weight of the law to come down on you – even if you were a school boy overheard slagging-off one of your mates.

  It being mid-week, my client was one of only a handful of custodies. Having taken instructions and tendered a plea of not guilty, I was leaving court when I came across Gail Paton in the lobby, leaning against an ancient, ornate, cast-iron radiator, chatting to another female lawyer and one of the clerks. When she saw me walk by she detached herself from the conversation and came over. ‘Robbie, I’ve been meaning to give you a call,’ she said, looking around shiftily as though she was about to try and sell me a dodgy wristwatch. ‘Can we go somewhere private?’