Killer Contract (Best Defence series Book 4)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  ‘No comment,’ I said to the latest in a series of questions.

  Sooner or later Fleming would get the idea. For now he was in full interrogation mode. ‘We know it was either Imray or you who made the call,’ he said, which, like being interviewed at all, was generally a good sign, because if the cops did actually know who it was and had sufficient evidence, they wouldn’t be trying to wring out an admission.

  ‘Do yourself a favour. Tell us what you know and we can help you.’ Fleming’s sidekick was so bored he was talking like a British TV cop show. In a minute he’d be asking me to make a clean breast of things or turn Queen's evidence.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘We’ve got your pal next door,’ Fleming said.

  I could only presume he meant Andy. My former assistant wouldn’t be best pleased, but no matter how upset he was with me I knew he wouldn't stray from the Munro & Co. policy of omertà.

  ‘And we’ve got a tape recording of the call to the British Transport Police.’

  What they didn’t have was any video evidence of the call. I’d checked for CCTV cameras before I made it.

  ‘The one where you or your pal pretends to be Sheriff Albert Brechin.’

  ‘We’ve got the pair of you bang to rights on this one,’ said the other cop.

  Even Fleming was getting fed up with his colleague’s clichéd interruptions. He gave his corroborating officer an I’m-asking-the-questions look, then leaned across the table at me, red in the face.

  ‘We've got evidence that you were at the train station and the recording will do the rest,’ he said.

  They might have someone to say I was at the station, they might be able to link the call to Andy’s phone, but, other than that they had a recording of my Sheriff Brechin impersonation, one I’d always felt was highly authentic, right down to the cocked-eyebrow expression of disbelief that he gave jurors, while listening to defence evidence. I couldn’t see a team of forensic voice analysts being assembled at public expense to scrutinise vocal wave-lengths, or whatever it was they did, for the sake of a prank. Wasting the time of a couple of British Transport cops? It would have been a light relief for them; a change from scraping suicides off the tracks.

  ‘Well?’ Fleming asked, more in hope than expectation.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘We've already contacted the Sheriff, he doesn't even own an iPad.’

  Brechin probably thought an iPad was a patch pirates wore.

  ‘Shall we call it a day at that, Inspector?’ asked the bored detective.

  Fleming couldn't help a quick exasperated glance up at the camera in the corner of the room that was preventing more robust forms of questioning. ‘The time is three forty-four on Thursday the fourth of April, two thousand and thirteen. This is Detective Inspector Fleming terminating the interview with Robert Alexander Munro.’ Without another look in my direction he got up from his seat. ‘Get him out of here,’ he said to his colleague.

  I met Andy outside the police station. He’d remained silent, and so it looked like I was in the clear. Unlike me, Andy hadn’t insisted on being detained and had gone to the station voluntarily so he had his car with him. He agreed to give me a lift. I was expecting to be on the receiving end of some flak.

  ‘I should have stuck you in just now,’ he said. ‘I told you it was a stupid idea at the time.’

  ‘It worked,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yeah, it worked for you. You're all right. You've got a nice high profile murder trial. I'm on the buroo.’

  ‘You'll find something,’ I said.

  ‘What's Kirkslap’s view of it all?’

  What did Andy want me to say? That his former client was pining after him? He wasn’t.

  ‘Kirkslap was lifted tonight,’ I said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Did you know that Kirkslap had threatened to kill Violet?’ He didn't. ‘What about the diamond necklace?’

  ‘What diamond necklace?’

  ‘Kirkslap gave one to the other girl who was there to shut her up. I can't believe you didn't find out about her. If word gets out that her silence was bought it’ll be a disaster.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘One of the girls from Karats. She was there when Kirkslap threatened Violet. He bribed her to keep quiet, she hasn't and last night he went round to her house and started banging on the door. He’s been arrested for a breach and got no chance of bail.’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it or of anyone being bribed,’ Andy said. ‘When’s this supposed to have happened?’

  I would have liked to have known that myself, but I didn’t want to go anywhere near that question in case I got the answer I didn’t want, and it too became public knowledge.

  Andy dropped me off at my house, where I heard my dad’s snores before I found him asleep on the couch. The TV was on with a late night repeat of a documentary about Army recruitment policy, or, since the cuts, the lack of one. It hadn’t always been so. I’d had a young client, not long out of school, who’d been enticed to join the Argyll’s with the promise of passing his HGV. A year or so later, with a category E on his licence, he hadn’t been too pleased to find himself, not driving a truck for ASDA, but trundling through some of the scarier neighbourhoods in Afghanistan.

  My dad stirred when I switched off the TV. I prised the empty whisky glass from his hand and set it down on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘They let you out, then?’ he asked, sleepily.

  ‘All a big misunderstanding.’

  ‘Aye, Robbie, you’ve always been terribly misunderstood.’ He yawned, leaned forward and I helped hoist him to his feet.

  After he’d gone to bed, I sat down on the still warm couch. The bottle of Bowmore had got a bit of a fright. I found it stuffed down the side of a sofa cushion. I wasn’t tired and I thought a nightcap would help. I was reaching for my dad’s glass when I heard a buzzing sound and saw my mobile phone on the coffee table flashing. I hadn’t taken it with me. The first thing the cops did if you were detained and had a mobile phone in your possession, was go through it and read the texts, phone logs and contacts. If they found anything remotely interesting you’d never see it again. By the time I’d picked up the phone it had stopped. I had two missed calls: one from Joanna and one from my dad’s house. I checked the answering service. The only message was from Joanna. She’d met with Kirkslap and sat with him through his police interview. It didn’t sound as though things had gone too well. She expected he’d be appearing in court later in the day. As I was wondering about the call from my dad’s house, the phone started buzzing again. My dad’s number. I answered straight away. It was Danny Boyd.

  ‘I’ve got to speak to you urgently,’ he said. It was three o’clock in the morning. I asked him if it could wait.

  It couldn’t.

  Chapter 37

  The curtains were drawn and not a chink of light escaped my dad's cottage. I parked out front and limped to the back door, dodging scaffold poles, wooden batons and pallets of slates that had been indiscriminately stacked in readiness for Arthur the roofer's return from sunnier climes.

  On the way down the side of the building, I tapped on the window of the spare room where I expected Danny Boyd to be. I thought he might welcome me at the back door. He didn't. I tried the door handle. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open, stepped inside. The kitchen light came on, blinding me. After the second or two it took my eyes to adjust, there in front of me stood the giant that was Deek Pudney. The sight of Deek standing in my dad's kitchen was bad enough, worse still was the handgun he held at his side. It was huge. A Desert Eagle. It would have taken most men two hands to lift the thing. Deek raised the gun and pointed it straight at my head, so quickly I was unable to react. Bam! More light; this time inside my head. I reeled backwards, crashing into the side of the door. In that moment I was sure I was dead, and yet how could I be thinking at all if I had a bullet in my brain? I don't know how long it took me to come to my senses. Dazed, I put a palm to my
forehead. Blood, and then pain. A great deal of pain. I looked up at Deek, my head throbbing, my eyes watering. The handgun was at his side again. Next to him stood another familiar figure: Jake Turpie.

  He shoulder-barged into Deek. ‘I told you to give him a fright, not knock his head off.’

  If I hadn't been in such a state of shock, I could have confirmed, on Deek's behalf, that I had been given a fright all right. One I would relive for a long time to come.

  ‘It's this thing,’ Deek said, holding up the enormous pistol, like it was a toy. ‘It weighs a ton.’

  ‘Look what you've done to his head, eejit.’ Jake prodded the ever increasing bump in the centre of my forehead where the muzzle had struck me. ‘Get him a cloth or something.’

  ‘Jake?’ I just about managed to croak.

  My landlord pulled up a chair and sat down on it, legs crossed on the kitchen table. Deek handed me a tea towel.

  ‘Put some water on it first,’ Jake told him, and seconds later a soaking-wet towel was slapped into my trembling hands.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jake said, when satisfied I'd received the appropriate first aid. ‘The point is, that's how easy it would have been. Consider us quits.’

  ‘Quits?’ My brain was constructing whole sentences, and yet my mouth was capable of uttering only one word at a time.

  ‘Aye, quits. Win, win. You're not dead and I'm expecting my rent paid as usual.’

  I began to wonder if I'd had that nightcap after all and was asleep on my couch. ‘What?’

  Jake brought a leg down from the table and kicked a nearby kitchen chair towards me across the Lino. ‘You know you're not exactly Mr Popular with certain people.’

  I sat down. ‘Who?’

  ‘People who'll pay to have you killed. I was asked to set you up. I said no.’ He looked around my dad’s cottage. ‘This would have been a great place to do it, though.’

  He paused. Waiting for me to say something it seemed.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He grunted.

  What was Jake’s game? Was this all some elaborate set up to save him three months’ rent? I squeezed out some water from the sodden tea towel into the sink and sat down again, the towel clamped to my forehead. It felt better - slightly. Who knew? In a day or so I might feel able to string two words together.

  ‘If you’re wondering: the boy's gone,’ Jake said.

  I’d totally forgotten about Danny Boyd. He was the reason I was there and now he was... ‘Gone?’

  ‘Naw. Not gone, gone. Gone. As in he’s not here anymore. I let him go. You and the boy were a package deal. I couldn’t very well have him done in and not you. I wouldn’t have been paid. You’re a lawyer. You know what contracts are like.’ Jake stood. ‘Right. That’s me. I’m off.’ He walked to the door. ‘I’ll send Deek along later for the rent. This month’s and next’s in advance.’ He beckoned to Deek to follow.

  ‘Wait.’ I gave the lump on my head a final press with the damp towel and then threw it onto the draining board. I went over to the big white Belfast sink and ran my head under the tap.

  ‘What is it now?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Who wants me dead?’ I asked, after I’d had a long drink from the tap. I rubbed my hair with the tea towel, trying to avoid the painful bump on my forehead. ‘Come on, Jake. I deserve to know who’s trying to kill me.’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t know.’

  ‘Somebody does. The person who told you about the contract does. That name would do for a start.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Jake opened the door.

  ‘If I’m dead who’s going to be your lawyer. Who else would have got Deek off?’ Just about anybody with a law degree, but Jake didn’t know that.

  He turned to Deek. ‘Put that gun away and let’s go.’ He stepped out of the back door, Deek following close behind.

  ‘I thought you were a business man,’ I called after him. ‘You’re not looking at this from a business angle.’

  Jake reversed back through the door, bumping into Deek. ‘What angle?’

  ‘Munro & Co. has a lease with you. We shook on it. Twenty years - remember?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, we’re only three years in. Someone kills me and the lease is over. With me gone, who do you think is going to take that dump on the High Street off your hands?’ I now had Jake’s attention. ‘Seventeen years is… two hundred and four months. Multiply that by my rent and that's how much you lose if someone fulfils that contract.’

  Jake said nothing, but by the lowering of his brow I could tell he felt a faint stabbing pain in his wallet.

  ‘I still can’t tell you,’ he said, after a while. ‘You know how these things work. It’s a sub-contract. A chain. I only know the next link up.’

  ‘That’s all I want to know. Tell me who it is and I’ll work my way upstream from there.’

  Jake shook his head. ‘Can’t do it.’

  I was going to start on my, if-I’m-dead-there’s-no-rent-for-you, line of argument again, but if Jake thought about that too much he might realise that if I was going to be killed by someone else, there would be no rent anyway, and he might as well collect on the contract himself.

  He pulled the semi-automatic out of Deek’s trouser belt and held it out to me. ‘Do you want this to keep you company?’

  I had the crazy idea of taking the gun, pointing it at Jake and asking him for the name he wouldn’t reveal. ‘No thanks,’ I said.

  Jake shrugged, as though he’d done all he could. ‘Then stay on your toes. You’re no good to me dead.’

  Chapter 38

  I was showered, shaved, dressed and away before my dad surfaced the next morning, thus avoiding any interrogation over the bump on my head.

  Joanna arrived dead on nine, looking fresh, cheerful and exactly how I didn’t feel.

  ‘I got him out,’ she said. ‘Kirkslap. I got him out on police bail. He’s to attend Glasgow Sheriff Court on a bail undertaking in three weeks. It’ll have to be knocked on, of course, because he’ll still be in the middle of his murder trial. What happened to you?’ She came over for a closer look at my injury. ‘One raised contusion, two centimetres in diameter, with a central superficial laceration. Where did you get it?’ she asked, as though I’d picked it up while I was out shopping.

  ‘Someone wants to kill me.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  I pointed at my forehead.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No idea. That’s the problem. All I know is they’re after Danny Boyd too.’

  Grace-Mary arrived for the day, popping her head around the door to my room. ‘Morning all.’ She looked at me and frowned. ‘What did you do to your head this time?’

  ‘You still got your coat on?’ I asked.

  She stepped through the door and with a flowing gesture of her hands revealed that she was indeed wearing a raincoat.

  ‘Then nip down to Sandy’s. Coffee for me and Joanna, whatever you’re having, and cakes for us all. I’ll have a doughnut. Actually, better make that doughnuts.’

  ‘I love it when you’re all masterful,’ Grace-Mary said, taking a rain-mate out of her pocket.

  Grace-Mary out of the way, I told Joanna all about Danny Boyd.

  ‘You’re going to have to go to the cops,’ she said. ‘Today. Right now.’

  ‘What about Kirkslap’s case?’

  ‘I can deal with that. I’ll give Cameron Crowe a call and see if there’s anything else he wants us to do.’

  Joanna went to the window and looked out at the rain drenched High Street. ‘Why do you think they let Kirkslap out? I was sure that bail would have been opposed and he'd be a custody today.’

  I tried to think it through. If Kirkslap had appeared in court, no matter if he’d pled guilty or not guilty, the story would have been all over the newspapers. ‘Maybe the Crown didn't want to take any more chances,’ I said. ‘There has been enough publicity already and
it's something of a jinxed prosecution for them as it is. Could be they didn't want to run the risk of the defence raising a preliminary issue that even more media-coverage would mean that Kirkslap couldn't get a fair trial.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joanna said. ‘That could be it. Or it could be because I’m such a great lawyer.’

  By the time the coffee and cakes had been scoffed, the day’s work was sorted and divvied up between us. I would go to the Sheriff Court, deal with the few procedural diets we had that morning and call into the police station while I was there. I wouldn’t mention Jake Turpie, but I would let them know what I could about Danny Boyd in the hope that they might redouble their efforts to track him down.

  So, off to court where the bump on my head provided a source of amusement and light relief for many of my fellow defence agents. The day dragged on. Albert Brechin took a proactive interest in intermediate diets; one which his brother and sister Sheriffs generally didn’t share. He liked to quiz everyone at great length, prosecution and defence alike, as to their state of preparedness; mainly, I was sure, because he didn’t want the Crown to overlook something that might later come between the accused and a conviction. By the time he had finished scrutinising each of the sixty or so cases on the roll, it was late afternoon. Paul Sharp had the last case to call and I waited for him outside the courtroom.

  ‘What are we going to do about Danny Boyd?’ I asked him, as he took off his gown, rolled it up and stuffed it along with his files into a large leather holdall.

  ‘I thought we'd had this discussion,’ Paul said.

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘Have they caught him?’ Paul eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘No, but it’s a matter of time, and then what?’

  ‘Do you mean, who’s going to act for him? You or me?’