Crime Fiction (Best Defence series Book 5)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  I spied Gail as I was walking down the centre aisle between the two rows of glass-fronted interview rooms. She was sitting with her back to me, a client in red prison-issue polo shirt and jeans sitting across the table from her, between them a stack of case files. I opened the door and poked my head in. Gail said she would be another half-hour, which was enough time for me to have a word with Mark Starrs and to discuss his negligible bail prospects.

  There were twenty of those thirty minutes remaining when my client appeared with his prison escort through the door at the top of the hall.

  ‘Starrs!’ the screw shouted down the length of the hall.

  ‘Room five!’ his colleague, who was sitting at a computer screen at the other end, called back and the prisoner was pointed in the direction of my booth. He wasn’t happy.

  ‘What’s going on, exactly?’ he asked, taking a seat across the table from me.

  It seemed simple enough to me. What was going on, exactly, was that he had got blootered and been too hung-over to crawl out of his bed in time for his preliminary hearing.

  ‘When you failed to appear they granted a warrant,’ I replied, not bothering to add the part about how he had since been arrested and taken to jail, thinking that much was obvious.

  ‘But I got a phone from the cops telling me I didn’t need to go to court,’ Starrs said. ‘I was going to phone you and then I got your email saying the case had been put back a week.’

  It wasn’t unusual for preliminary hearings to be postponed. It could be done by a judge in chambers, if sufficient grounds were set out in a section 75 minute and both Crown and defence agreed. In the case against Starrs and Quirk the first two preliminary hearings had been knocked-on in that way, while the defence awaited disclosure of evidence, but if that was the best excuse my client could come up with, it wasn’t good enough.

  ‘I didn’t send you an email,’ I said.

  Starrs looked at me as though I were mad. ‘But I emailed you back. You wanted to meet me and wondered when would be best. I emailed back to say any time was okay.’

  ‘Think Mark. When have I ever sent you an email? I don’t even know your email address. I hardly know my own.’

  ‘It’s easy enough to remember,’ he said. ‘mail at bestdefence.biz.’

  I liked it. Pity it wasn’t mine. If he was telling the truth then it was clear someone had played a trick on him. If his mum could provide me with a print out of the bogus email from his home PC, I could see his prospects for bail increasing from nil to slim.

  The door of the cubicle next to mine opened and first her client and then Gail Paton exited. Her estimation of time had been spot on.

  I told Starrs that there was no time to waste and that I would contact his mother straightaway to obtain a copy of the email. All going well I could have a bail petition lodged before close of business. With a bit of luck we could have a bail hearing arranged for the following week. My client groaned. If he thought another few days in custody was bad, how would he handle a life sentence?

  After a brief farewell, Mark Starrs and I went in opposite directions down the hall; the young man to his cell, me to the waiting room just outside the interview room complex, where Gail Paton was sitting on one of the ridiculously low chairs. I never understood how such a soft seat could be so uncomfortable.

  ‘What’s up, Robbie?’ she asked.

  I didn’t mention the twenty thousand pounds in my bank account from Devlin Polyminerals, only that I was wondering if there was any more word on the conman.

  ‘The Crown’s Confiscation Unit is all over Devlin because of that tantalite mining thing you were telling me about,’ Gail said. ‘It’s been decided to raise a civil action to recover what they see as the proceeds of crime. A lot of important people have been scammed and they are more interested in getting the money back, rather than waiting five years in the hope that Devlin might be convicted of something. For one thing, they’d have to catch him first.’

  That had been the problem with the old procedure; before you could recover the proceeds of crime there was the not so small matter of having someone convicted of committing a crime. In a complicated case that could take years with no guarantee that a bored and confused jury would see things the prosecution’s way after months’ of trial. Raising civil proceedings was evidentially a lot simpler. The standard of proof was lowered to the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt, and civil actions were decided by judges not juries, who were paid to be bored and less prone to confusion when asked to make a finding in favour of the Crown.

  ‘I had been hoping for a criminal trial for obvious reasons,’ Gail said. ‘It may still happen and so I’m trying to keep in the loop, but I’ve already had Messengers-at-Arms at my door trying to serve an Initial Writ. I had to tell them to get lost. I don’t know where Victor Devlin is, far less have instructions to accept service of a civil writ craving twenty million.’ Gail pulled herself out of the seat. ‘Which, from my memory of civil procedure, means they’ll have to serve it edictally, pin the writ up on the walls of court and advertise it in the newspaper, all that stuff. If Devlin doesn’t put in a notice of intention to defend, they’ll be granted a decree by default which will enable them to go against his assets.’

  ‘So where do I fit in?’

  ‘The Crown has two lists. The first is a list of some companies in which they think Devlin has an interest. It’s watching the bank accounts of those companies and making a second list of where the money is going. Your firm’s name appears on that second list. How much have you got? I wouldn’t touch it if I were you. You’re probably going to have to pay it back at some stage, if it’s deemed to be proceeds of crime. Wait and see what happens.’

  ‘How long is that likely to be?’

  ‘Ages,’ Gail said. ‘One of the Messengers-at-Arms was quite chatty while trying to squeeze Devlin’s whereabouts out of me. He was saying that Devlin has literally scores of companies, mostly registered off-shore and in countries with some very unhelpful governments. The Crown is suing Devlin personally at the moment and also the Polymineral Company, but word is that the bulk of the assets are out of reach, a lot has simply disappeared and much investigation will need to be carried out. Meantime, some people who were caught in the fraud are raising their own actions because it’s not clear what will happen to any proceeds of crime the Crown does recover. Most likely the Scottish Government will just take it and splurge it on important things like Gaelic lessons for Polish immigrants.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you told me earlier and putting the money through as a fee,’ I said. ‘If I just leave it where it is it’s going to look suspicious.’

  Gail shrugged. ‘Might work. If you can show that you were properly instructed by Devlin or one of his companies.’

  ‘How about if I was instructed by his representative?’

  ‘I take it you carried out a proper client identification, completed an anti-money-laundering matrix?’ she said in a tone that suggested she knew very well I wouldn’t have bothered.

  ‘You’ve had a lot of dealings with Devlin and his business associates over the years. Rupert Smith? Recognise the name.’

  Gail creased her face, mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Nope. I think I’d have remembered a name like Rupert.’ We walked along the corridor and through the security door and I waited in the reception area while Gail collected her handbag from one of the plastic cubicles. For some people, prison is a revolving door; Barlinnie actually has one, and after we’d walked through it to the outside world, Gail stopped.

  ‘Hang on a moment, Robbie. She took her cellphone from her bag, prodded the screen and put it under her hair. ‘Jim, it’s me,’ she said. ‘About the Devlin case. Yes, again. He’s my client, remember? Away you go. How can the case be confidential if they’re about to pin a writ to the walls of court and advertise it in the Scotsman? Never mind how I know. Any more snash and I’ll not be letting you buy me dinner tonight.’ She winked at me
. ‘So, are you sitting comfortably? Good. I’ve a name for you. Rupert Smith. Is he involved in anyway? Maybe an associate of Devlin, a director or a secretary of one of his companies or something like that?’ She listened for a while, tapping her foot on the tiled floor. ‘Right. Thanks. See that wasn’t so difficult was it? No, not Italian again: Thai, that new place in the west end. No, the other new place down the west end. Well, find out. I don’t know - ask one of those policemen you’re so pally with. See you at eight. No jeans. And not that old pair of cords either.’ She pressed the screen to end the call.

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked, feeling slightly sorry for Jim whoever he was. An accountant and Gail’s boyfriend. Some people had no luck.

  ‘I was wrong,’ Gail said. ‘I know, I know, doesn’t happen a lot, but apparently there aren’t two lists: there are three. The third being a list of Victor Devlin’s victims in order of those who’ve lost the most money. And...’ She stuffed the mobile phone into her handbag again. ‘It would seem that your Rupert Smith is right at the very top.’

  Chapter 41

  ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ Sandy, proprietor of Bistro Alessandro, master of all things fried and percolated, whispered to me as I ordered my Wednesday morning coffee and bacon roll. Without looking up from the counter, he jerked his head at a corner table, where even a broad-brimmed summer hat and dark glasses couldn’t disguise the elusive Suzie. ‘Bella, bella.’

  I told Sandy I’d be sitting in for breakfast. He had already anticipated my instructions and set down on the counter a bacon roll on a saucer and a mug of black coffee. I carried them over to where Suzie was sitting in front of an untouched cup of tea, a thin slice of lemon drifted across the surface. From her expression it looked like she’d been sucking on it.

  According to ex-Police Sergeant Alexander Munro, there was no such thing as a coincidence; that was the first thing new recruits to the Force were told. That and how not to leave bruises. Suzie had served me up a whole bunch of coincidences, right from her re-entering my life after an interval of almost twenty years, to accidentally bumping into me in London and coaxing out of me the entire background to the Dominic Quirk case, to her sharing the same literary agency as surprise witness Clyve Cree. I had so many questions to ask I hardly knew where to start.

  Suzie kicked things off. ‘We can’t see each other anymore, Robbie. You have to stay away, for both our sakes.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ I said.

  She stirred the tea with a teaspoon, chasing the lemon slice around the rim of the cup. ‘It is. Trust me.’

  ‘But I don’t trust you, Suzie. I know you’re involved with Al Quirk. You used me to find out how to get his son off with murder and it looks like you’re now part of a plan to falsify evidence to secure the boy’s acquittal by using Clyve Cree as a witness.’

  Suzie didn’t reply. She took the slice of lemon for a few more spins around the cup before hooking it out with the teaspoon and laying it on the side of the saucer, where it drooped over the edge like a dead anaemic goldfish, dripping onto the table.

  ‘It’s not too late,’ I said. ‘Tell Al Quirk and this guy Cree to back off. Cree just needs to go to the cops, tell them he was mistaken and it must have been some other conversation he overheard on a different night between different people. Things will go back to how they were. Without Cree’s evidence, the Crown will offer the old deal; the one you thought wasn’t good enough. Mark Starrs will do a couple of years and Dominic Quirk can take his chances at trial with his original defence.’

  Slowly, Suzie lifted the cup from its saucer and wet her lips. Eventually she looked up at me. Even through the sunglasses her eyes looked tired, sad. ‘Robbie, you think you know what you’re talking about, but you don’t.’

  I took her hand across the table. ‘Listen to me, Suzie. You’re my friend, but Mark Starrs is my client. It’s my job to secure him the best possible result. I’m not going to sit back and watch him go off to prison, just so that Dominic Quirk can walk away from yet another dead body.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ Suzie pulled her hand away. ‘And here was I thinking you had more than a little to do with him walking away from the first one.’ She drank some more tea. ‘But, of course, last time his father was paying you. Who are you to judge? It’s about money with you, Robbie. At the end of the day, everything in this world is all about money.’ She pulled a napkin from the wooden holder in the centre of the table, dabbed her mouth and looked at it as though she expected to see something interesting.

  Sandy came over, wiping his hands on a blue and white chequered tea towel. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked, staring suspiciously at my untouched Americano and intact bacon roll.

  I assured him everything was fine. He took a step or two away from the table so that he stood directly behind Suzie. He jabbed a finger down at the top of her sunhat and silently, but dramatically, mouthed, ‘who’s she?’ He let his hand go limp, waved it from side to side, narrowed his eyes and blew out through his rounded lips. I lifted Suzie’s cup and saucer, handed it to him and asked him to go freshen it up.

  ‘What if you believed that a certain person was guilty,’ Suzie asked, after Sandy had retreated back behind his counter. ‘Would it change your mind if you knew that, at the end of the day, justice was going to be done, no matter how it was achieved?’

  ‘It depends very much on whose idea of justice we’re talking about. Do you remember I told you the story of the Black Bitch? Her master was left to die of starvation. Theft was a capital offence back then. Nowadays he’d probably have been given a community payback order. Was death by starvation a just sentence because it happened to be the law back then?’

  ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,’ Suzie said.

  Suzie’s tea arrived, with what looked suspiciously like the same slice of lemon taking another dip. I gave Sandy what he eventually recognised as a step-away-from-the-lady stare.

  ‘Eternity is a long sentence,’ I said, after the cafe-owner had grudgingly obeyed.

  ‘What about for murder?’

  ‘That takes us back to who you’re asking.’

  ‘The people with power decide what justice is,’ Suzie said.

  ‘And the people with money are the people with power, is that right? Suzie I know you’re in a financial mess. Don’t try to justify your actions with pseudo-jurisprudential waffle. Leave that sort of thing to me. How much were you paid? Enough to clear your debts?’

  Suzie took a final sip of tea, collected the shoulder-bag that hung from the back of her chair and stood up. ‘It’s been nice chatting, Robbie; however, I only came to warn you to stay away. You think I’m in trouble? You should think of yourself.’

  I had been looking for Suzie so long I couldn’t just let her go. I got to my feet and stood in the way, blocking her path. ‘If Cree goes into the witness box and lies, I’ll have no option other than to take you down with him. Think about it. Attempting to pervert the course of justice, perjury, these all carry long prison sentences.’

  Suzie draped the strap of her bag over her shoulder. ‘You would do that?’ she said. ‘You’d see me sent to prison to save someone who for all you know killed an innocent teenage girl?’

  ‘That’s right because for all I know, he didn’t. And even if I did know, it wouldn’t change my duty to do my best for my client.’

  Suzie put her hands out and took me by the wrists. ‘There is a bigger picture here that you can’t see, Robbie,’ she said. ‘With you on his side I’m sure Mark Starrs will do just fine.’

  ‘I meant what I said, Suzie.’

  She ran the flat of a hand down the side of my face. Please don’t do anything stupid, something you might regret.’ I’d never been threatened in such a pleasant way before, it took a second or two before I realised what she’d said. She took her hand away, unbuckled the front flap of her bag and removed an A5 sized package. ‘How’s Jill?’ she asked, a smile tacked on. ‘Wedding pla
ns moving along at apace?’

  And that was another thing, never mind getting her to sign a book for my dad: how could I ask Suzie to plead my case to my ex-fiancée now?

  She stuffed the package into my hand, dipped a shoulder and pushed past me. ‘I really do hope everything goes well.’

  With a tinkle of the bell over the café door she was gone.

  Sandy came over. ‘Give me her phone number and Jill need never know any of this ever happened,’ he laughed, flicking my legs with his tea-towel.

  I stared down at the envelope in my hand. It was brown and fat, just the way I liked them - except I had a funny feeling I wasn’t going to like this one.

  Chapter 42

  From Sandy’s, post bacon roll and coffee, I made the short trip to my office and began to sift through my in-tray of non-urgent mail.

  ‘Why not start with the urgent stuff first?’ Grace-Mary asked.

  When I told her what I was looking for, she disappeared through to reception and returned with an A5 size gold-coloured card in her hand.

  ‘Invitations belong on the mantelpiece,’ she said.

  I took it from her. My invite to Zanetti’s opening ceremony, with charity ball to follow. I was supposed to RSVP.

  ‘Have I?’ I asked.

  ‘Have you what?’

  ‘RSVP’d.’

  ‘You mean have I RSVP’d for you?’

  ‘You are my secretary.’

  ‘True, but I’m not your psychic secretary.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me it had come?’

  ‘Why do you think it was on the mantelpiece?’

  It doesn’t matter how good you are at tennis, at the end of the day, the wall wins. There was an email address at the foot of the card. I bashed off a message of acceptance. My finger had no sooner departed the send button than another email bounced back at me advising, with regret, that my name was no longer on the list of official invitees and wishing me good health and a nice day.