Evidence of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  Magic pulled a cigar from a walnut box and Squeaky Voice whipped out a lighter and did the needful for him. Magic blew three perfect smoke rings and smiled at Eddie, who was still cold but had stopped shaking. ‘Now I suspect you didn’t come here to see me because I’m an entertaining fucker. I guess you want help, so talk, Eddie, and just tell me what you want and what’s in it for me?’

  Eddie did as he was told, recounting as much as he could and let him know that the problem was Billy Nelson. As soon as he mentioned the words Loyalist and UVF, Magic McGinty’s flint-hard eyes glinted with interest. He was brought up in a dirt-poor, but devout, Catholic home and was the product of starving Irish immigrants who’d come to the Scottish shores because there was nowhere else to go. He still had relations in West Belfast and they’d been the victims of both Loyalist paramilitaries and, as they saw it, the British Army. When Magic thought of Loyalists, his mind automatically conjured up a picture of the screaming Hun hoards that made up the support of Glasgow Rangers. He hated the Rangers right to the depths of his corrupted soul, and their collapse into the lower region of Scottish football had been like a blessing from heaven.

  ‘Stop there, son. Did you say Belfast Loyalists in Edinburgh did for old Joe?’

  Fleming was aware of Magic’s pathological hatred for all things on the blue – or sometimes orange – side of the religious divide, so he had intentionally played the card with as much emphasis as he could. He finished the rest of the story and added his last bit of intelligence – that as far as he knew they were being supplied from Belfast. It couldn’t be from anywhere else or they would have heard.

  ‘Belfast Loyalists on your (or should I say our?) turf, and the gear likely coming from Belfast.’ Magic shook his head at the thought then sucked hard on the cigar, closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair to think it through.

  Eddie was starting to speak again when Magic’s free hand shot up, palm outwards before he’d finished the first word of the first sentence. The room was freeze-framed again and he waited as if there was no such thing as time.

  Somewhere in another room there was the sound of a clock signalling that the world was still moving forward. Then Magic opened his eyes and sat forward, those black bullet holes still glinting; he looked like he had a plan and that he was enjoying the thought.

  ‘Okay, Eddie, let me look into this and I’ll get back to you. I’m going to have a word with Mr Billy fuckin’ Nelson and see what the man has to say. I don’t want to start a war, but I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse, just like the mafia . . . eh, Eddie?’ He sucked on the cigar again and blew another three perfect smoke rings. ‘Fuckin’ magic!’

  Ten minutes later, Squeaky Voice let Eddie out of the front door and waved goodbye like a good housewife seeing her man off to the office. The young man stepped back into the taxi, closed his eyes and sank into the back seat, exhaling with relief.

  ‘You look pale, chief – everything okay?’ said the driver, making eye contact via the rear-view mirror.

  Eddie opened one eye and met the man’s stare. ‘Once again, pal, you really don’t want to know, but let’s just say it was fuckin’ magic and leave it at that. Just get me back through Edinburgh way.’

  He closed his eyes and said a quiet prayer of thanks as the driver pulled out into the traffic.

  Halfway along the M8 he was startled by his phone trembling in his pocket. He opened his eyes and found they were sticky with exhaustion. The meeting with Magic had drained every ounce of energy out of him; he just wanted to get back to his flat and curl up in a ball.

  It was his brother Pat. ‘Just had a call from the wee female who’s got the line on Andy Clark.’

  ‘And?’ He hoped it was simple; he didn’t have the will to deal with complications after his meeting with Magic.

  ‘Up to you, but Clark’s called her, and he wants to come round to her place tomorrow night. Don’t know what you think but that’s the story. I said we’d give her a nice wee wage for it, and she’s as happy as fuck.’

  Eddie was weary but he had the advantage of youth, and the thought of action fizzed up his blood like a hit of good-quality amphetamine. He pulled himself up in the seat and his eyes cleared. He’d started the ball rolling with Bastard Baxter and then Magic so what was the point of fucking around till something happened?

  ‘Let’s go for it and see if he bleeds.’

  The taxi driver was a nosey fucker who earwigged Eddie’s call. His eyes shot up instinctively and were reflected in the mirror again.

  Eddie put the phone down and met his gaze. ‘For the third and final time, pal, you do not want to fuckin’ know.’

  The man’s eyes went back to the road, and he kept them there all the way back to Eddie’s front door, where he was handed a pile of money that was more than he normally earned in a week, but he still hoped he didn’t have to pick the boy up again. His instincts told him he’d been on a journey where business had been done in a world inhabited by an alien race, who might walk the same streets as he did but lived with an ever-present and terrifying uncertainty about the future. It was accepted as their way of life, but the driver couldn’t understand it – he just wanted to get home and be with his wife.

  But what frightened him most was that there was still a part of him – somewhere deep inside – that wished he could be more like them.

  Eddie Fleming felt the hot stream of water from the shower wash away the stinking sweat that had leaked from him in fear when he’d looked into the eyes of Magic McGinty. He towelled himself dry, sat down in front of the television and watched the latest bad news from the Middle East without actually taking in a word.

  It was done: the moves were being made and several sets of players were manoeuvring round the chessboard. The police, Billy Nelson, Belfast Loyalists, Magic McGinty, bent cops and drug dealers were all drawing towards each other, but there was still one more player on the sidelines waiting to enter the game.

  22

  Bobo McCartney’s advocate felt like pulling her hair out. Everyone involved in the failed bank robbery had pled guilty apart from the man himself. He’d decided that he was going to trial come what may, despite the fact that there was enough evidence to convict him in front of ten different juries. Some of the gang had given statements that had stuck Bobo right in it, because they’d realised that the guy was a megalomaniac. They didn’t know what megalomaniac meant, but one of the CID team who’d interviewed them kept calling Bobo a fuckin’ megalomaniac twat and it had sounded about right, whatever it meant.

  Bobo’s advocate had defended some hopeless cases in her time but this one took the shortbread biscuit. He kept claiming that it was all a conspiracy – that he’d been ‘entrapped’ in a plot hatched by the CID and his gang – but Bobo had read far too many books that he didn’t really understand. Other people had got off on technicalities, so he’d figured why not him.

  They were in the High Court cell area, and the advocate tried again to talk some sense into the fool sitting opposite her. ‘Mr McCartney, once again I must say to you that you may well pay a heavy price if you go ahead and are then found guilty. I know your position is that you’re innocent’ – she tried not to choke on the word – ‘and I respect that, but I must tell you that the Crown has a powerful case, and I believe the jury will be convinced by that evidence.’ She looked for signs of agreement but Bobo didn’t move. ‘Your friends, or former friends, will go into the witness box and say that you were the driving force behind the alleged conspiracy.’

  Bobo put one finger up in the air to make her pause. ‘I just want to make it clear that I was not driving on the day of the alleged bank robbery. I was being driven to Edinburgh to visit the castle by the other men in the car, and they were going to drop me off. If they were then going to rob a bank, I knew hee haw about it by the way.’ Bobo was trying to be as polite as possible but couldn’t help mixing the street into his newly acquired legal vocabulary.

  His advocate wanted to rest her h
ead on the table and cry. She was up to her eyes in work that paid her a decent return and would have liked to have been getting on with it instead of picking up a scrap of legal aid and defending an imbecile who’d read a couple of law books on remand and now thought he was an expert.

  ‘My position is clear, and I believe the jury will see that I am an innocent man.’ He tapped the table with his forefinger to give emphasis to his claim, and if anything his confidence was rising. Bobo believed he was far too clever for them all, convinced that he was about to put on a show that would see him punching the air outside the court, celebrating a unanimous and famous ‘not guilty’ verdict. Night after night in his cell he’d imagined addressing the press and demanding a public enquiry into the ‘fit-up’ that had seen an innocent man rotting on the remand wing. There would be the press interviews and, best of all, the compensation claim. That would set him up for life.

  The advocate sat back in her chair and tried to suppress the urge to scream right in his face. She tried hard, but she was human; she failed.

  Macallan paced the cobbles with McGovern outside the High Court, cursing the time they were wasting at McCartney’s trial when there was so much on her plate. ‘I can’t believe this, Jimmy. Bobo’s even dafter than I thought when we arrested him.’

  McGovern smiled patiently and shrugged. ‘Everything’s in hand. Lesley’s got the team out on Nelson this morning so no worries. To be honest, we might have the old problem that Nelson hands out the orders but doesn’t do much that’s hands on. Never mind – if nothing else Bobo should be an entertaining distraction.’

  Macallan looked round at the man who’d become as much of a friend as a colleague – and a calming influence when the job tested her patience. ‘You’re right. We’ll have a debrief when we get back to the office later. We might need to move the surveillance away from Nelson onto one of the others. There’s a lot coming in, and no doubt the analytical team will have some ideas for us.’

  They walked back into the court to hear the news that Bobo had sacked his counsel and was going to defend himself. Apparently they’d had some sort of dispute. The trial started and the judge, who looked as pissed off as everyone else in the court, tried to advise Bobo that it was in his own interest to have legal counsel, but the boy would not be swayed. He’d read all about the performance of Tommy Sheridan, and as far as he was concerned, if Tommy Sheridan could do it then so could he.

  After the Crown had stuck a couple of his partners in crime in the witness box, it was clear to a blind man that Bobo was a guilty man and a thicko in a class of his own. When that moment came everyone in the court, except Bobo, started to take the proceedings for what they were – a damn good laugh. The judge maintained an appropriate air of solemnity but was secretly pleased that he could recount the amusing antics of the accused to his brothers and sisters in the Faculty of Advocates. It would make a great story for an after-dinner speech.

  Bobo tried it all, including accusing his ex-gang members of being police agents, and three of the jury went red in the face trying to suppress their laughter when he repeatedly tried to use the word provocateur but could only get as far as ‘provo’ before halting in confusion. When he threatened to assault one of his co-accused, who’d pointed to him as the leader of the failed robbery, the judge had intervened, leaving Bobo crestfallen.

  McGovern took the stand and had never felt more confident in his life. The witness stand in the High Court could be the loneliest place on God’s earth, but for Bobo’s trial it had become a place of levity and entertainment.

  Bobo felt that things were going badly wrong, and he rightly suspected that no one in the court was taking him seriously. He didn’t like the barely suppressed smile on the inspector’s face and decided to give McGovern his best shot. He did the preliminary questions and hoped he was leading McGovern into a trap.

  ‘Now, Inspector McGovern, is it the case that there was an undercover agent in this case?’

  ‘I think you might be getting different things mixed up here, Mr McCartney. There was a confidential informant but that’s not the same as an undercover agent, who’d normally be a police officer.’

  Bobo felt a nervous tic develop near his left eye. He’d thought he was clued up on court practices but within the space of a couple of hours he’d been made to feel as if he was naked in the centre of some freak show – and that he was the lead freak. ‘I put it to you that you’re a fuckin’ liar, by the way.’ Bobo took a step back and waited for McGovern to fold. He’d forgotten that foul language wasn’t normally used on witnesses.

  The judge struggled to look angry. ‘Mr McCartney, you’re in serious danger of turning this trial into a farce. Will you please refrain from using swear words in my court.’ The judge sat back and thought about the heaviest sentence he could drop on Bobo’s head before turning to McGovern, who was waiting patiently for guidance. ‘Please continue, Inspector.’

  ‘I am not a liar.’ McGovern couldn’t have been more relaxed if he downed a bottle of Mogadon with whisky chasers.

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’ Bobo’s voice had moved a pitch higher as he struggled with his own performance.

  ‘Mr McCartney. You may not be aware but that is all the inspector has to say. You asked him a question and he answered,’ the judge said wearily, wishing that, just sometimes, he had the power to hang people.

  Bobo stared at the judge and felt like his thought process was being overwhelmed by doubt. ‘Fuck off.’ He said it as quietly as possible and the judge missed the actual words, but he knew there had been a murmured form of abuse.

  ‘Did you say something, Mr McCartney?’

  Bobo blinked rapidly and thought about trying a runner. ‘No, Your Worship,’ he lied and realised that he was going to prison for a long time.

  ‘Please refer to me as My Lord, not Your Worship!’

  Bobo blinked rapidly again and looked back towards McGovern, who was shaking his head. His world was collapsing in front of his eyes and he decided to throw the dice. ‘Is it not the case, Inspector, that upon my arrest you did with malice aforethought threaten to kick the shite out of me?’

  The court descended into chaos, and although Bobo didn’t get the press conference he’d imagined, he did make all the news outlets. When he’d fired his last question at McGovern, several members of the jury plus the clerk of court became helpless with laughter. The judge struggled to control events as Bobo lost the plot and decided to climb into the witness box and punch McGovern in the puss. That was Bobo’s last mistake before they carried him off for medical treatment. Only a trained eye would have noticed the short jab McGovern landed on the Glasgow robber’s chin, but for someone without any boxing experience, it would have been like being hit by a sledgehammer. The late great ‘Smokin’ Joe’ Frazier was McGovern’s boxing hero and had been one of the leading exponents of the six-inch hammer blow.

  As far as the judge was concerned though, McGovern had quite properly defended himself when attacked and it had been a proportionate response.

  Macallan and McGovern went to a restaurant near Parliament Square and over coffee and tourist-price scones they laughed their way through discussing the already legendary trial of Patrick ‘Bobo’ McCartney.

  ‘It’s a cracker, isn’t it, and will definitely keep you going at piss-ups for the next few years. But I suppose we’d better get back to the real world and Billy Nelson, who’ll be a bit harder to nail,’ Macallan said, and McGovern nodded in agreement as he stuffed the last of the fruit scone into his mouth.

  They walked across Parliament Square and saw the Advocate Depute who’d prosecuted the McCartney case striding towards the Advocates Library. With his wig and gown flowing in the light east wind, he looked like some spectre of retribution ready to slay those who would bring evil to the capital city.

  ‘I think that was a trial I’ll remember for some time, Superintendent,’ he said with a broad smile, then his face dropped as he realised that Macallan might be interested i
n something else that had just been passed to him.

  He sighed. ‘It just occurred to me that you were the officer in charge of the Billy Drew case.’

  Macallan nodded and felt her heart sink. The law was an ass so she knew what was coming, and the AD’s face confirmed bad news.

  ‘Billy Drew won his appeal today and for all intents and purposes he’s a free man.’

  Macallan nodded again. The news didn’t really shock her as she’d fully recognised the problem with the evidence against Drew, despite him being guilty as sin, and she knew there was a good chance that the other two members of the gang – his brother, Frank Drew, and his mate Colin Jack – would be freed as well.

  ‘Such is life,’ she said to the advocate with as much lightness as possible – but it didn’t really work.

  She turned to head towards the taxi rank. ‘Jesus, that’s all we need,’ she said to McGovern. ‘Hopefully he’ll keep his head down for a bit, but God knows what’ll be going through his mind. I’ll need to have a word with Mick just in case. Nobody knows where Jonathon Barclay is so that’s just as well.’

  ‘We can get a couple of field officers to start gathering intel on him, but that’s about as much as we can spare at the moment. We’ve a lot on, and of course the Nelson job has tied up what’s left,’ McGovern said in flat tones, sympathetic to what Macallan was feeling. If anything else happened they would struggle, and the chief super would pile the pressure on them.