Crime Fiction (Best Defence series Book 5)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  I screwed up the invitation, threw it across the room and very nearly into the bin. With any chance of assistance from Suzie out of the question, the idea of catching Jill at the Zanetti charity ball had seemed a brilliant one. On the walk back from Sandy’s, my brain cells electric with caffeine, I had imagined it all: music, dancing, champagne, I approach Jill with my truthful explanation, she’s resilient at first, but my charms prevail, then come the tears, forgiveness, re-engagement, perhaps some more champagne.... What was I left with now? Camping outside Jill’s house, hoping to catch her on one of her rare trips home and probably being lifted for stalking?

  No. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Kaye Mitchell opened the brown envelope and pulled out a photograph. She studied it for a moment or two. It was a picture of Suzie and me sitting at the Savannah Hotel bar. ‘You know Suzie Lake?’ She laid the photograph down on the desk and dealt the next face up on top: Suzie and me cuddled up on a very small sofa. ‘Yup, you know Suzie, all right.’ She turned over the next: Suzie and me, arms around each other, stumbling along a hotel corridor. By the time she’d flicked through a picnic scene in Princes Street Gardens and come to the last photograph: the two subjects standing next to a playground swing, lips inches apart, Kaye had made her diagnosis. ‘You’re stuffed.’

  Normally, I wouldn’t have dreamt of disclosing to Kaye anything that I didn’t want widely publicised. A life in newspapers had left the editor of the Linlithgow Gazette with a tendency to spread news, some of which was best unspread.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ she asked, stuffing the photos back into the brown envelope. She looked out of the window and the thirty or so feet down to the High Street. ‘I can open the window for you to jump just now or would you rather wait here and I’ll get Jill to push you out?’

  I sat down across from her and pushed a stack of past editions to one side so that I could see her across a Himalaya of paperwork. It was how my desk would have looked, but for Grace-Mary. ‘Jill’s already pushed me,’ I said.

  ‘As in...?’

  ‘As in, these photographs will only confirm what she already believes. She broke off the engagement a couple of weeks ago.’

  Kaye stood and leaned over the desk at me. ‘And no-one told me?’ she said, as though she’d missed a UFO landing on Linlithgow Cross while she’d been out to lunch.

  ‘I was trying to keep it quiet, until I had a chance to explain.’

  ‘Two weeks?’

  ‘Two weeks last Friday.’

  ‘Jill’s never mentioned it.’

  If Jill hadn’t yet confided in her pal, then maybe she wasn’t fully committed to the break-up. Maybe she was just trying to teach me a lesson.

  Kaye thought about it. ‘Right enough, it’s over a fortnight since I saw her last. You would have thought she could have given me a call, though.’

  ‘When’s the interview?’ I asked. ‘Your exclusive look around Zanetti’s new research facility?’

  ‘I told you about that did I?’

  ‘You mentioned you were trying to arrange one. We were in Sandy’s. Has it happened yet?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Sandy’s. I remember. You never had enough money for your rolls and I had to—’

  ‘I’ve been trying to speak to Jill, but she won’t meet with me, won’t even answer the phone, and so—’

  ‘You thought you could tag along with me to the interview and tender the most important plea in mitigation of your life, is that it?’ Kaye had grasped the point and summed it up perfectly in twenty-five words or less. Those early years in small ads hadn’t been wasted. She hauled open a desk drawer, then another and another until, at last, she surfaced with an ivory card embossed with gold lettering. ‘No, that’s not it.’ She threw the card back into the drawer and came out with another. The invitation was printed on white card, not gold like mine had been, but it had the unmistakable yellow and blue Zanetti Biological’s logo at the top. ‘My hopes of exclusivity were unfounded,’ Kaye said. ‘I’ll be there, but along with the rest of the press pack. There’s a free bar - things could get messy.’

  I couldn’t help notice that the invitation was addressed to Ms Kaye Mitchell and partner.

  Kaye sighed when I pointed this out to her. ‘Have you even got a dinner suit?’ she asked. ‘One that fits?’

  I did. Somewhere. That probably fitted. Once.

  ‘Okay,’ Kaye said. ‘But you owe me one.’ She handed me back the brown envelope ‘And, by the way, you’re our designated driver.’

  Chapter 43

  Like me, Al Quirk did a lot for charity. I called mine legal aid work. He called his the Quirk Foundation, an organisation that promoted the arts and medical research, but mainly Al Quirk. His well-publicised philanthropy and resulting popularity made him easy to locate, but incredibly difficult to get close enough to talk to, especially for me. Since our encounter at St Mary’s Cathedral, I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled to meet again. And yet, I needed to pass a message to him. Fortunately, I had another avenue to go down.

  The Quirks had not been resident in Linlithgow for many years and the family now resided in an immense sandstone property on a quiet street in the Grange area of Edinburgh. It was the kind of neighbourhood where you got funny looks if you were so poor you had to drive your own car. The property was surrounded by a high wall, topped with black arrow railings, broken only by formidable entrance gates that I was surprised to find wide open when I drove up to them that Thursday night. From the early evening Scottish news, I knew Al Quirk was in Glasgow, addressing officials from Creative Scotland on the importance of funding a national youth arts strategy. No doubt they were happy to put up with Al rabbiting on at them for a while so long as he shoved his hand in his pocket at the end.

  I had expected to be received by a maid, but there was no immediate answer to my tug on the brass bell-pull that protruded from the wall next to the front door, and I was about to try again when I heard a sound from within.

  ‘Is that you, Al?’ The muffled voice of Mrs Quirk, who I’d met on several occasions during her son’s earlier difficulties.

  ‘It’s Robbie Munro, Mrs Quirk,’ I shouted through four inches of solid oak.

  There was the sound of a key turning and the door swung slowly open. Christobel Quirk squinted at me through a pair of ornate spectacles. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Robbie Munro. I acted for Dominic in his... In his last case.’

  She smiled. ‘Of course you did. I knew your mother, did you know that?’

  I did. On every occasion we’d ever met, Mrs Quirk had told me that.

  ‘She was a lovely girl. We met on our first day at school, sat side by side at the same desk at West Port Primary. They knocked it down. It’s a roundabout now. How’s your dad?’

  Before I could answer she was off again, telling me how she could remember when a young police cadet had asked to take her friend out on a first date to see the new James Bond movie at The Ritz Cinema; a baronial building, its facade all battlements, machicolations and rope mouldings, now a derelict and crumbling edifice on Linlithgow High Street, just an uncoiled reel of film from my office.

  ‘Mrs Quirk—’

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s Chrissie. Have you come to see Aloysius? If you have, I’m afraid he’s out - as usual. Away speaking to some art students in Glasgow. Dominic has gone too. I’m glad. It’s the first time he’s left the house since he got out on bail. We’ve tried to encourage him to go visit friends, after all, even although he’s not allowed to drive yet, we’ve got a chauffeur on tap.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘To think I used to complain about him treating this place like a hotel. Now he just wants to sit in his room and mope. He might as well still be in prison.’

  ‘Actually, Chrissie, it’s you I came to speak to.’

  Her smile dropped. ‘Nothing bad has happened has it? Is it about Dominic’s case? You know he’s got a new lawyer don’t you? I told Aloysius we should have stuck with you, but he was adamant…’ She s
tepped back. ‘Sorry, I’m being rude. Come in. Sorry about the state of me.’ She looked down at herself as though she were wearing filthy rags and not a cerise trouser-suit straight off the Milan cat-walk, albeit after some serious letting-out.

  ‘I was through the back watering my plants,’ she said, setting off down the wide hallway, me following, my feet sinking ankle deep into the thick pile of a ruby-red carpet. We passed several rooms and continued right to the end, where there was a set of French doors and, beyond them, a wide sweep of floodlit lawn. We took a right turn and entered what Mrs Quirk called the conservatory, which it was: in the same way the London Eye was a fairground Ferris wheel. It was the sort of structure I’d have expected to find in the tropical section of a botanical garden, housing exotic plant species and perhaps the occasional rare butterfly or hummingbird. The incredibly humid atmosphere was disturbed only by the gentle background hum of an irrigation system. Jill would have loved the place. Her own house had once been full of plants, nothing like on this scale, yet it had broken her heart to give them away to friends when she realised she’d be spending most of her time in London or further abroad. The only alternative had been to leave them in my charge; might as well entrust the Scottish justice system to the Scottish National Party.

  Mrs Quirk offered me a seat. I preferred to stand. She waved a hand at the sea of pot plants, heavy with sweet smelling blossoms. ‘Dominic calls them my surrogate children.’ She picked up a plastic spray bottle and gently blasted the foliage. ‘Evening is the time to water. Do it during the day and you’ll only end up scorching the leaves.’ Some spray landed on her glasses. She put down the bottle and from somewhere secreted about her person produced a small white square of cloth which she used to clean the lenses. ‘Micro-fibres. They don’t smear like a hanky,’ she said.

  I didn’t know when Al Quirk was due to return. I only knew that I didn’t want to be found bending the ear of his wife when he did, and that debating the benefits of micro-fibres over the clumsy, big-old fibres of a cotton handkerchief was only wasting time. ‘Mrs Quirk—’

  ‘Chrissie,’ she reminded me, giving her glasses a final polish. ‘No need to be so formal. I think we know each other well enough to be on first name terms, don’t you?’

  ‘That depends,’ I said. ‘I’m here to talk to you about Dominic’s case. I’ve already spoken to your husband and he won’t be very pleased if he finds out I’ve been here saying the same things to you.’

  She fired off another rapid burst from the spray bottle, then put it down and perched herself on the edge of a wooden rocking chair. ‘You were very good to Dominic in his first case. Do you know it’s almost a year to the day since the crash? There’s not a day goes by without me thinking about poor Wendy. When I was in court and saw those photographs the police had taken...’ She conjured up once more the little white square and blew her nose on its micro-fibres. ‘I send flowers to the grave every month. I told Aloysius you should be acting for Dominic in this one too. Now he’s saying you’re trying to put the blame on Dominic for killing that girl in St Andrews. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes… that’s sort of why I’m here. I’m worried that your husband is trying to fabricate evidence to have Dominic found not guilty.’

  ‘What do you mean fabricate?’

  ‘Making it up. Bribing a witness to say he heard something that he didn’t, to put the blame on my client.’

  ‘Dominic says—’

  ‘I’m not interested in what Dominic says.’ I apologised for my abruptness. ‘Chrissie, I can’t talk about Dominic. What he has to say he needs to keep for his own lawyer.’

  ‘His new lawyer’s an idiot. And I’m not just talking about his stupid hair. Mr Sharp was a lot better.’

  ‘Mr Sharp had to pull out of the case because he was going to lead a particular defence for Dominic, one that even if successful would have sent him to jail, though only for a relatively short time. Not life.’

  ‘I don’t want him to go to jail at all,’ she said.

  ‘And that’s why your husband has taken him to another lawyer, because this new lawyer is going to proceed with a different defence.’

  ‘A better one? One that doesn’t get Dominic the jail?’

  ‘Yes...’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘What’s wrong is that the defence is based on the evidence of a witness who I think your husband is paying to lie in court.’

  Mrs Quirk didn’t say anything.

  ‘I know how difficult this must be for you, but I think you, and especially your husband, should know that if he goes ahead with the plan, I aim to reveal it to the court and Aloysius and everybody else involved can expect lengthy prison sentences.’

  ‘Is that a threat, Mr Munro?’

  I turned. I hadn’t heard Al Quirk come into the room. He was standing there in a sports jacket and flannels, Dominic behind him, his chauffeur, minus hat and sunglasses by his side.

  ‘Not a threat. Advance notice,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a football match. I’m not going to sit back and let my client go off to prison because you’ve decided to put the fix in. Does your wife know what you’re doing? Does Dominic?’

  Quirk’s step forward was matched by that of his chauffeur: his chauffeur with the cropped hair, square jaw and strong, serious face. A face no longer in soft focus on the back of a book, but in the flesh and staring right at me. It was shameless. Quirk sending one of his employees to perjure himself in order to save his son. In fact it wasn’t only shameless, it was downright arrogant and extremely stupid. ‘That’s enough,’ Quirk said. ‘You were warned.’

  ‘Yes, I was warned. And you can stick your blackmail photographs—’

  ‘Blackmail? Are you insane?’

  ‘No, and I’m not stupid either. You think you’re in control, but I’m warning you. If you—’

  ‘Get him out of here,’ Quirk said, and instantly the chauffeur was on me, gripping my wrist and upper arm. ‘We can do this the hard way or the easy way,’ he snarled, and it was then I realised that I had not only met him on the back of a book. I’d met him on a dusty track leading to Victor Devlin’s house.

  This time I plumped for the easy option.

  Chapter 44

  Friday dawned and I’d hardly slept a wink.

  Suzie, Al Quirk and Clyve-with-a-Y all acting together. I had to admit, it was quite clever to have Suzie extract from me my views on the problems with Dominic’s defence and to remedy those defects by introducing a witness whose evidence was subtle and yet potentially highly-effective. And yet, had I been Al Quirk, I’d never have chosen someone connected to me. How could he be so brazen as to set up his own employee to testify for his son at trial? Had he really expected it not to be found out? Had the Crown not made any background checks? When my dad went to take a statement from him, Clyve Cree had never mentioned anything to him about his job as Al Quirk’s chauffeur, presumably he didn’t mention it to the police. It was flattering, in a way, that Al had thought I might discover the plot, otherwise why go to all the bother of his back-up blackmail plan with photographs of me and Suzie?

  I was still thinking things over when I arrived at work that morning. I was late but intended to make up for it by leaving early.

  ‘You do know that you’re supposed to be in Cupar Sheriff Court for ten don’t you?’ Grace-Mary asked, as I struggled into the office.

  If I had ever known I’d totally forgotten.

  ‘Remember how you asked me to type up that bail petition for Mark Starrs on Wednesday afternoon, like the world was about to end? How you made me phone the clerk’s office to sweet-talk them into fixing an early date? Well I did and it’s today.’ She dropped the case file on the desk in front of me. ‘There are problems on the Forth Road Bridge as usual. You’d better get going.’

  There are no particularly quick routes to Cupar in Fife, but one of the good things about setting off late was that all the early starters who clogged the Forth crossing at morning rush hour,
had gone ahead leaving the road relatively clear. It was dead on ten o’clock when I parked in the town centre car park which Fife and Kinross Council kindly provided for free. From there it was but a short walk across the road to the pink-fronted Sheriff Court house, one of ten to close in a few months’ time under the Scottish government’s scorched earth justice policy.

  Two young men: dead Doreen’s brothers, tracksuits and trainers, stood leaning against the public waste bin to the left of the big white entrance doors. They’d never missed a step in the procedure to date. I’d seen them hanging around the High Court on a number of occasions, sullen-faced and mouthing threats. They watched me cross the road towards them, eyes never leaving me as I walked past and up the three stone steps to the court.

  Inside the building, on the ground floor, Mark Starrs’ father was sitting in the café. He saw me and waved me over. He had brought with him a copy of the bogus email Mark had received, purportedly from me, and telling him he wasn’t required to attend the preliminary hearing. Fortunately, the Sheriff presiding that morning was about as reasonable a Sheriff as I could have hoped for; however, it still wasn’t going to be easy persuading him to grant bail again for a man who had failed to show for a High Court preliminary hearing.

  By the time I made it upstairs and into court, the Sheriff was already on the bench and my client in the dock. The original indictment having been deserted due to Mark’s non-appearance, proceedings had reverted to the original Petition which had first called in court over three months before. The case had to call in private and the clerk had thought it best to deal with it first, before the courtroom opened to the public.

  ‘The Sheriff’s been waiting,’ the clerk said.

  I apologised to the bench and, after the case called and my client had identified himself, launched straight into the bail application, presenting the bogus email and laying on thick the fact that had someone not played a trick, Starrs would have attended court just as he had when required on all previous occasions.