‘No, hen,’ he said to Joanna, an edge to his voice, looking at me all the time. ‘That’s Jill’s brush, you know, Jill, Robbie’s girlfriend.’
‘Don’t think so,’ Joanna said, ‘I’ve had it for years.’ She gave the brush a quick once-over out of politeness. ‘Nope, definitely mine. I left it here this morning. We had quite a night of it last night. I was totally shattered this morning. Still am.’ She stuffed the brush along with the envelope into her handbag.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a business meeting tonight so just make yourself something to eat from whatever’s lying around, and I’ll see you later. No need to wait up.’
But, by the look on his face, I thought he probably would.
Chapter 26
Larry Kirkslap's home would have been more accurately described as a bachelor pad, were it not for the small matter of his marriage, twenty-six years previously, to the long-suffering Marjorie. It was a Fyfestone and timber lodge, built into the side of a hill on the fringes of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, with no neighbours within sight and deer in the garden.
Despite some seriously fast driving, it had taken Joanna and me the best part of an hour to find the place, situated as it was somewhere between Aberfoyle and Kinlochard, two towns that shared a horse. When we arrived, Kirkslap, Zack and Mike were waiting for us.
‘The moment I set eyes on it, I knew it was the place for me,’ Kirkslap said. ‘It’s out of the way and yet only an hour from Glasgow and not much more to Edinburgh.’
Why wasn't the man worried? I'd be a wreck. He'd been found guilty once, probably would be again, and yet he was relaxed and pleased to show me and my assistant around a lodge thats interior design fell somewhere between Laura Ashley and Harry Lauder.
‘Shot that beast myself,’ he said, patting the antlers on a stuffed stag's head that was fixed to the wall, half-way down a flight of tartan-carpeted stairs. ‘Plenty of good hunting up here. You could easily live off what you kill. Nothing like a nice piece of venison is there?’ He gave Joanna the vegetarian a knowing nudge. ‘Sadly, I had to surrender all my guns when all this nonsense over Violet Hepburn kicked-off. Haven't shot anything in months.’
‘Can we get started?’ Mike was as keen as I was that Kirkslap curtail the guided tour so that we could talk business. The preliminary hearing was only two days away. We were supposed to be able to tell the court we were ready for trial. Some kind of defence would have been nice too.
When we did gather to talk about the case, I made it clear from the outset that I did not approve of meetings with anyone other than my client. Solicitor/client confidentiality didn't extend to business partners and well-wishers. Anything stupid or incriminatory that Kirkslap said, would go no further than Joanna or me, but, if a sneaky Prosecutor got wind of a free-for-all consultation of the type that had been lined up for that evening, in theory, all non-lawyers present could end up on a Crown witness list.
‘You're forgetting - I am a lawyer,’ Mike said. We were all seated in the den, a log fire blazing in the hearth. He laid his iPad case on his knee, opened a word-processing app and prepared himself to take notes. ‘Not a criminal lawyer, but I consider myself part of the defence team.’ All eyes turned to Zack.
‘Fine,’ he said, pulling himself out of the armchair he'd not long sat down in.
‘No, let Zack stay,’ Kirkslap said. ‘This case is just as important to him as it is to me. If I go down for this, so does he. So does all of P45.’
I wasn't there to question Kirkslap's high opinion of himself; however, I did have a feeling that, with his track record, Zack would manage to keep things afloat, and that, notwithstanding the young American’s PR shortcomings, if need be there would be others available to step into Kirkslap's shoes and front the company.
Joanna took out notepad and pen as I began to summarise what I knew of the prosecution case, highlighting the negatives.
It took a while.
At the end, there were several important pieces of damaging evidence that Kirkslap just couldn't explain.
‘We need answers,’ I said, for the umpteenth time. ‘It wisnae me, is not going to cut it as a defence.’
Mike stirred the dying embers in the grate with a poker and lobbed on another couple of logs from a stack by the hearth. ‘All right, Robbie. There's no need for that tone.’
I didn't take my eyes off Kirkslap. He couldn't take his eyes off the drinks cabinet, though I'd told him there would be no alcohol consumed during our consultation. ‘Joanna's going to give you a list of the points that caused the most trouble during the first trial.’ From our perusal of the papers, Joanna and I had hurriedly prepared a document containing the edited highlights of the Crown case. From that we'd compiled a list of the most important blocks of circumstantial evidence on which the prosecution case had been constructed. We needed explanations from our client in order to remove as many of those blocks as possible, and thus undermine the Crown case.
That was the plan. Unfortunately Kirkslap wasn't a great help. After a couple of hours discussion we had barely managed to dislodge a single brick from the wall of evidence that stood between him and an acquittal.
‘You're giving me homework?’ Kirkslap stared glumly at the sheet of paper Joanna handed to him via Mike.
‘We must know where you stand on these important questions, Mr Kirkslap,’ Joanna said. ‘Read them over. Think about them carefully. Just take your time—’
‘And let us have your answers by tomorrow afternoon,’ I said.
Kirkslap made a low growling noise in the back of his throat as though he was wondering why he bothered to hire lawyers if he had to do all the work himself.
Mike looked at his watch. ‘I think we’ve gone as far as we can tonight.’
Everyone stood except for Kirkslap. He was still staring at the sheet of paper in his hand; a breakdown of the case against him. I hoped it was slowly dawning on him how much work was required for his defence to succeed, and how much that defence, whatever we eventually came up with, relied upon him to produce some credible answers. I wasn’t asking the world. Not even the truth. Some half-believable lies would at least give us something to work with.
‘The preliminary hearing is at two o’clock on Friday,’ I reminded everyone. ‘We’re going to meet at the consulting rooms at one four two High Street at noon, so that we can have a chat with counsel before the case calls. They won’t make this a floating trial, there are far too many witnesses. They’ll probably book it in for sometime in May, possibly June. That will give us a good two or three months to be ready.’
‘That long?’ Zack sounded disappointed. ‘I just wish we could get it over and done with. All this uncertainty is causing havoc with our stock price.’
‘Thank you for your heart-felt sympathy,’ Kirkslap told his business partner.
‘You know what I mean, Larry. Shares in P45 have been on a roller-coaster ride for months now. If we’re going to further expand we need finance. The banks won’t come near us the way we are right now.’
‘If the trial is not going to be for months, what’s the big hurry in me handing my homework in?’ Kirkslap asked, sheet of paper in hand.
‘For one thing, counsel will expect to know the answers to all these questions so he can prepare a defence statement for Friday’s hearing, and, for another, depending on what your answers are, we’re going to need time to investigate and shore up some weak areas of the defence.’ If there was a defence.
I couldn’t believe that Andy had let the case go to trial in such a half-baked state. As far as I could make out, defence counsel’s tactics had been to sit back and see if the Crown could prove its case. Well it could, it had and would do again if nothing were done about it.
Zack went over to Kirkslap and gave him a friendly shove on the shoulder. ‘You know I’d ditch the whole business if I could make this thing go away for you, Larry,’ he said.
Kirkslap grunted. He was just a big baby. He looked the part; b
ig and brash, and he could definitely talk the talk, but just how intelligent was he? I remembered his smiling face as he exited the High Court on the day his first trial was deserted. Understandable and expected of someone who has been freed after undergoing the most traumatic month of his life, and yet, that had been his demeanour all through the proceedings. The man had more front than Buckingham Palace, sailing through life expecting things to fall into place for him. Up until now they had.
Mike gestured for Joanna and me to follow him.
‘I might not be able to come up with all the right answers,’ Kirkslap called after us. ‘But in case you’re wondering, and seeing how you haven't bothered to ask, I didn’t kill Violet.’
I turned around and walked back into the room. ‘Then who did?’ Perhaps I'd expected too much, thinking he might come up with an alternative scenario to that already sketched by Her Majesty’s Advocate.
He blinked a few times. ‘Someone else... I suppose.’
Chapter 27
Tuesday had been busy enough; Wednesday was even worse. There were trials, deferred sentences and custodies all calling at Livingston, and from mid-afternoon onwards my diary was packed with clients who’d been bumped while I’d focussed my attention on the Kirkslap case. Now that the brief was prepared, in the hands of counsel and I’d consulted with the client who was aware of those issues urgently needing addressed, I had some breathing space until the preliminary hearing on Friday.
Joanna was sitting at her desk in reception, sorting the mail, when I went to give her some final orders for the day ahead.
‘I want you to have Grace-Mary give you the files for all the intermediate diets coming up in the next fortnight. Make sure we’ve sent out disclosure letters on them all, download any statements that have come in from the PF and then check to see if we need to draft any section one-forty-nine-Bs. You know what Brechin is like - he’s the only Sheriff in Scotland who insists on those being lodged.
Throughout this little speech, Joanna was nodding continually, whilst generally ignoring me as she sifted through the yellow wire basket, selecting correspondence that needed a reply from that needing filed or binned.
I was leaving when I found my path blocked by a purse-lipped Kaye Mitchell. ‘Care to tell me what’s happening?’ asked the newspaper editor. ‘Between you and Jill,’ she added, although I’d already guessed the reason for her stern expression.
I really had no time to discuss my troubled love-life and, yet, at that precise moment Kaye was the only connection I had to the object of my affections.
‘A misunderstanding,’ I said.
‘Is that right?’ she said, staring down at Joanna.
‘Yes, it is right,’ my assistant replied, neither looking up nor pausing in her letter sifting. ‘So you can stop looking at me like that.’
‘Oh, well then, that’s fine, Robbie.’ Kaye made as though to leave. ‘I’ll let Jill know, shall I? That when she phones you, early morning, and the call is answered by another woman, young enough to be your—’
‘Wee sister?’ I suggested.
Joanna grimaced and dropped into the bucket some glossy leaflets inviting the lawyers from Munro & Co. to exciting and expensive CPD seminars in London on subjects I’d never heard of.
‘But not in an incestuous way,’ I corrected myself, making matters worse.
‘Good. Glad that's settled,’ Kaye said. ‘I'll tell Jill she can rest assured there is absolutely nothing to worry about and that it’s all been a big misunderstanding.’
I only knew two certain ways of placating irate women and both of them were chocolate. I had a box somewhere from a grateful client. The last person seen in charge of them had been Grace-Mary, who was in the next room wielding a red pen over my monthly figures.
‘Robbie and I worked all night on Monday preparing a defence brief,’ Joanna was telling Kaye when I returned with the box of chocs.
I opened the box and offered it to Kaye.
‘Preparing a brief. That what they're calling it these days?’ She helped herself to a strawberry cream. ‘Robbie’s idea of a brief is something scrawled on the back of a beer mat. This is Mr Seat-of-his-pants we’re talking about.’
‘A brief for the Kirkslap case,’ I said.
Kaye stopped mid-chew. ‘Kirkslap? Who? Larry Kirkslap?’
‘You’ve heard of him, I take it. His story was in some of the quality papers,’ Joanna said.
‘You’re acting for Larry Kirkslap?’ is what Kaye said. ‘You're acting for Larry Kirkslap, do you expect me to believe that, and is that really the best lie you can come up with?’ was what it sounded like.
‘Didn't you know his case has been re-indicted?’ I asked. Kaye’s blank expression was answer enough. When I thought about it, why should she have? I hadn’t heard any mention of it on the news or read about it in the newspapers.
‘When was this decided?’ Kaye demanded, inserting another soft centre.
‘There was a hearing last Friday,’ I said. ‘I don’t think there was a decision until late-on and the indictment wasn’t served until Sunday.’
‘How come this is the first I’ve heard of it?’ Kaye asked herself. She thought about it over a Turkish delight. ‘If it was too late for the Sundays maybe they’re saving it for this weekend.’ She looked up from her contemplations. ‘When is he next in court?’
‘Friday.’
Kaye smiled. ‘That would make a lot of sense. Grab a few photos of Kirkslap going into court, then slap the story on the front pages next Sunday morning. They’ll all be in it together, the Herald on Sunday, SOS, Sunday Mail, and to think I handed over everything I knew about the Boyd murder to them on a plate.’ She looked at her watch. Nine-fifteen. The Linlithgow Gazette came out on a Friday, with a deadline of noon, Thursday; bags of time to scoop the lot of them. She reached up and ruffled my hair.
‘And if Jill calls you, you’ll tell her about the misunderstanding,’ I said, as she spun on a heel. ‘And tell her to give me a call. I don’t have her new number!’ I yelled after her as she made off at speed.
Ten minutes later I was on the High Street, outside the newsagents, wondering whether it should be crisps or a Mars Bar for breakfast. The phone in my pocket buzzed.
‘Is that you, Mr Munro? It’s me, Danny.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I need to see you.’
‘You need to see someone all right, but it will have to be Mr Sharp. He’s your lawyer.’
There was a pause while Danny absorbed this information and then ignored it. ‘Do you have GPS on your phone?’
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Somewhere.’
He reeled off a sequence of numbers. ‘That’s where I am. If you can’t find it on your phone, use Google Earth.’
He either hung up or lost what had been a fairly weak signal. I’m not sure when I forgot the numbers he’d given to me. It was at some point after I started looking for a pen and sometime before I’d finished jotting them down on the back of my hand. I tried to phone the number on the screen and was put through to his answering service. I left a message for him to call back and went off to court.
Upon my return to an afternoon of clients, I tried to call Danny again without any success. I had the same result when I phoned Malky to talk about the surprise party, and remembered he’d be on air with his early-evening, football phone-in show. I decided to work on for a while, chiefly because I wasn’t looking forward to going home to face the one-man firing squad that was my dad, over what Joanna kept referring to as Hairbrush-Gate. When I pointed out it was her forgetfulness that had caused me the grief, she offered to come home with me and explain things to my dad.
‘Thanks, but I can handle him,’ I said, paying no heed to Grace-Mary’s stifled snigger. Bad enough having the staff make fun of you without them fighting your battles as well.
I worked on for a while longer, even catching up with things that were only urgent and not yet critical. At eight I went down to Sandy’s for somethi
ng to eat and at nine, when the café-owner started sweeping up around me, I went home to be confronted by my dad.
‘Where have you been? Malky’s been here for half an hour,’ he said, as though I’d kept royalty waiting.
‘I would have been here even sooner, but I forgot Dad was staying here and went to his new place,’ my brother said. ‘See you’ve got Spanish roofers on the job - Juan Guy.’
The Munro humour was in the genes.
‘You’ve got one person on the job?’ I said. ‘That’s going to take ages.’
My dad disagreed. ‘Not any one person: Arthur Campbell. I want someone who knows what they’re doing.’
That would be Arthur Campbell, all right. He was a master stonemason and restorer of ancient monuments. If Stirling Castle ever needed repointed, he'd be the first person called. Asking Arthur to re-slate a cottage roof was like asking Michel Roux junior to whip you up a cheese and ham toastie. He wasn’t old enough to be a school chum of my dad's, so I could only assume he was one in the long list of people who owed my dad a favour from his days in the Force. What had Arthur done, I wondered, to which Sergeant Munro had turned a blind eye? For him to be doing the old man's roof, it would have had to have been something fairly serious.
‘He’ll have it sorted in no time at all. And it'll last. When Arthur Campbell does a roof, the rest of the building can collapse but the roof stays up.’
‘And how long - exactly?’ I asked, when he'd quite finished laughing at his own joke.
He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, riffled his moustache with a finger, composure regained. ‘A week, ten days.’
‘What!’
‘He's got other jobs to go to as well.’
‘But ten days?’
‘Call it two weeks, tops. Now can we discuss what Malky’s come all this way to talk about?’
He made it sound like the special-one had circumnavigated the globe and not just hammered twenty-five miles down the motorway in his new 3 series.
‘We can’t hold the party at Jorge Kleinman’s place,’ Malky said, when we were seated in the livingroom. ‘He’s just not for having it, and, anyway, it’s too far away. You’d have to lay on a fleet of taxis.’ He looked around. ‘This place is way too small and if your cottage doesn’t have a roof, Dad, I say you hire a function suite.’
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