by WHS McIntyre
The seats around us began to fill. Ballboys ran down the tunnel, dispersing in all directions, followed at a trot by the two teams of players and finally the match officials walking after them. I didn’t really care who won but, such was the intensity of the atmosphere, even I was excited.
That’s when inspiration struck, as did the underdogs. An early shot from the edge of the box was deflected off a defender’s heel. It spiralled in the opposite direction leaving the wrong-footed keeper with nothing to do except watch it squirm agonisingly over the goal line.
It turned out to be the winner. That’s why I seldom gambled. I felt worse having thrown away a tenner than I’d have felt good about winning eighty. Stan didn’t even mention his wager. To him a thousand-pound loss was probably the same as losing ten pounds was to me.
We left the ground and arrived at the point where we were to part company, jubilant fans, shouting and singing, jostling and bumping their way past us.
‘Thanks very much for that, Stan.’ I said, ‘It was a good game.’
‘Not a problem. Glad you enjoyed yourself. Let me know how things go for Toffee on Monday.’
‘About that . . .’ I said. ‘I was wondering . . .’ I wasn’t entirely sure how to present my idea. ‘What if when I see Toffee I do a wee deal with him that would help me out with another case I have on the go? Wouldn’t affect you too much.’
Stan frowned.
‘Not at all, actually.’
That hurried assurance didn’t lift the frown. ‘You should have mentioned it earlier, Robbie. I’ve no time right now. How about we meet up later and talk about it?’
Given the infrequency of my meetings with Stan, such a discussion was unlikely to happen inside the timeframe I had in mind.
‘It’s okay, Stan. Leave it to me. I’ll take care of everything. It’ll be fine.’
He was still frowning.
I laughed. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you trust me?’
‘Trust you? Of course I trust you. I trust everyone who works for me or they wouldn’t work for me.’ He reached out and gave me a not-so-friendly thump on the back that sent a flotilla of mini steak pies surfing my stomach on a wave of lager. ‘And I definitely know I can trust you, because you know what happens to people who abuse that trust.’
33
‘It didn’t take you long to break your promise.’
The voice on the other end of the phone came quick and breathless.
‘I’m holding our previous contract null and void,’ I said, propping myself up on a couple of pillows.
‘Careful, Robbie. Don’t start bandying about legal words you can’t back up with actual legal knowledge.’
‘You know very well what I mean, Hugh. Just because I might have said—’
‘No, you definitely did say.’
‘That I would never talk to you again about Antonia Brechin’s case, that was before the charge was upgraded from simple possession to supply.’
‘Which, may I remind you, had nothing whatsoever to do with me.’
I had to make this quick. Joanna was in the shower. If she overheard she’d want to know what was going on. ‘Let me spell it out for you in great detail.’
Ogilvie capitulated with a groan. ‘Just tell me what it is you want.’
The plan was a simple one and went something like this. Joanna had already told me that there might be a chance of the charge against Antonia being reduced to simple possession again, just so long as Antonia gave the Crown the name of her dealer. Very few people charged with possession ever did, on the basis that what the court could do to them was significantly less painful than what their dealer definitely would do if they squealed. I’d found a way of neutralising that problem. With two kilos of Bolivian Marching Dust in the boot of his car, and a previous conviction for precisely the same thing, Toffee McCowan was staring down the barrel of a long sentence anyway. An extra conviction for supplying Antonia with the fifty grams she’d had in her possession wouldn’t add a day to his release date.
‘Think of it Hugh. I hand you her dealer on a plate and you’ve still got Antonia Brechin pleading guilty to possession.’ Ogilvie made no sound of approval, but neither did he put the phone down. ‘Not only that, but you can tell Bert Brechin that the decision to save his granddaughter’s career, by reducing the charge, was all down to you. It’s like your birthday and Christmas rolled into one.’ I skipped the part about Toffee already being in police custody. Best to leave that out and lean more heavily on my promise to have Toffee confess to supplying my client.
‘And how exactly are you going to persuade this drug dealer to confess?’ I could hear a note of suspicion in Ogilvie’s voice, but mostly a lot of heavy breathing. ‘You going to phone him on a Sunday morning and annoy him until he cracks, like you’re trying to do with me?’
‘Never mind how I’m going to do it,’ I said. ‘All I want to know from you is if we have a deal or not. Then I can let you go back to doing whatever you were doing with Mrs Ogilvie.’
‘I’m not doing anything with Mrs Ogilvie. Mrs Ogilvie doesn’t . . . Look never mind, I’m out running and it’s hard enough getting up this hill without you—’
‘Deal or no deal?’
‘Deal,’ he panted. ‘The moment you let me have your man’s written confession to the supply, I’ll reduce the charge against Miss Brechin to simple possession.’
In for a penny, I thought I might as well get back in Gail Paton’s good books. ‘And her co-accused too?’
‘Okay, but you’d better get a move on. The First Diet is the day after tomorrow.’
An hour later, after breakfast and a shower, I was outside in the garden with Tina and Joanna. What had been a pleasant enough Sunday morning was deteriorating into a wet and drizzly mid-morning, not that a patch of rain was going to deter my daughter from poking dandelion leaves through the chicken-wire of the hutch door at the fluffy bundle inside.
‘So, what do you think of that for a plan?’ So pleased had I been with the deal I’d struck I thought I’d share it with Joanna after all.
‘You can’t do it, Robbie.’ She seemed quite certain about that, which was surprising because I was equally certain that I could; however, like a politician, I was prepared to engage in a consultation process before doing things exactly the way I’d intended to do them in the first place.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘Do we know if this guy Toffee did supply the cocaine to Antonia?’
‘No, but you can’t have everything.’
‘Then it’s illegal.’
‘What else?’
‘What else? Is the fact that your plan is based on a lie—’
‘Possibly a lie.’
‘And therefore a crime, not enough?’
‘A crime . . . ?’ I stooped to pluck a handful of dandelions. There was an abundance of them at the hutch end of the garden and running along the line of the fence. So many, that I was fast coming to the conclusion that my dad’s idea of building the hutch had less to do with acquiring a pet for Tina, and more to do with us weeding the garden for him. I held up the leaves clenched in my fist. ‘I’m probably committing a crime picking wildflowers.’
‘You’re not.’
‘Uprooting wildflowers is an offence, isn’t it?’
‘Not when they’re weeds in your dad’s back garden it isn’t. Stop trying to justify your actions. You know perfectly well you’re in the wrong and are just blinding yourself to the truth.’
I stroked a strand of damp hair that had fallen across Joanna’s face and softened my words. ‘All right, maybe pulling weeds isn’t the perfect analogy, but I’m trying to explain to you that there’s no harm done by a crime like the one I have in mind. Surely you see that?’
Joanna jerked her head away. ‘Robbie, when it comes to interpretation of the law, not many people see things the same way as you.’
‘Do you ever think that it might be those people who are wrong? Why does it have to be me?’
/> ‘Because it is.’ Joanna seemed definite about that too. ‘It’s all about you being wrong. Having someone who’s got absolutely nothing to do with Antonia Brechin’s case, take the blame for it is . . . It’s just not on.’
‘Not on? When did just not on become the test for justice?’
‘I’m warning you, Robbie . . .’
‘The man’s a drug dealer. He’s in custody for drug dealing. All he does is confess that he supplied some of those drugs to Antonia. Hugh Ogilvie says thanks very much for the conviction, reduces the charge against Antonia, she pleads guilty to possession just like she’s always wanted to do, and everyone’s happy. Especially me when I send Bert Brechin my bill.’
‘And this dealer in Dundee. He’s agreeable to this, is he?’
‘He will be. It’s just another charge that’s going to make no difference to his sentence.’
Joanna took the dandelion leaves from me and handed them to Tina. ‘I still don’t like it. You’re trying to make a man confess to a crime he’s innocent of.’
‘Innocent? He’s a drug runner. He’s probably done it hundreds of times. So what, he takes the blame for the one time he didn’t do it? That’ll make up for all the others he has done and got away with. It’s justice.’ I took her hands in mine. ‘How about you stop being a Fiscal for a moment? Did all those lectures on jurisprudence mean nothing to you?’
‘Robbie, everyone knows that jurisprudence means whatever you want it to mean. I’m more interested in what is legal and what isn’t.’
‘You want what’s legal more than what’s just?’
‘Without laws, justice is entirely abstract. What is legal is indisputable. It’s the law and we’re lawyers.’
So engrossed in our conversation was I, that I didn’t notice the rabbit had buzzed through the stack of dandelions, or that Tina had gone inside and was now returning with a selection of vegetables I was pretty sure were the ingredients for Joanna’s next batch of soup.
‘Those aren’t for the rabbit,’ I said. ‘They’re for us. The rabbit has got its own special food to eat and it’s had loads of dandelions. It’ll be full up.’
Tina pulled away, brows lowered, bottom lip protruding. I tried to take the vegetables from her, but she clung to them tightly.
Joanna knelt down beside her. ‘Tina, you’ve got to be careful what you feed Rosie. Some food is poisonous to animals. Did you know that if dogs eat chocolate or onions they can die?’
Tina could understand the problem with onions, especially if they were cut too chunky and in mince, but life without chocolate?
Joanna gently relieved her of the armful of vegetables. ‘You have to be careful. We’ll need to go and make sure that all these things are safe for Rosie to eat.’
I could only admire Joanna’s handling of the situation. It was both well-reasoned and informative, if not quite as much fun as my idea of tickling Tina until she dropped the stuff.
I took one of the smaller carrots from Joanna and gave it to Tina. ‘Here, this’ll be safe enough. Never did Bugs Bunny any harm.’
The rain had become more persistent. I left Tina with instructions to come inside once the carrot was finished, and Joanna and I made our way back down the garden to the cottage.
‘So, Antonia Brechin losing her career, me possibly losing mine, that’s okay because it’s the law?’
‘Robbie, you are not going to wear me down with your puerile arguments. What you are planning to do is illegal, plain and simple.’
‘It is justice, though.’
‘No, it’s your idea of justice. There’s a reason we have laws. It’s so that we know what justice is, otherwise justice would be a purely subjective concept. You must see that.’
‘Here, let me help you with those.’ I relieved Joanna of some of the vegetables. ‘After all, we wouldn’t want a rogue courgette falling into the wrong hands.’
Joanna gave me a wry smile. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Robbie?’
I smiled and nodded. I found it to be the quickest and easiest way to ignore what people I didn’t agree with had to say.
‘If there was no framework of laws, we’d be left with everyone thinking their idea of justice was the best.’
‘You’re right, Jo. It would be wrong for someone to bend the law just to make it suit their idea of justice.’
Wrong for someone, but not for me, and not if the law-bending was for the benefit of one of my clients.
34
As it turned out, there was no need for me to drag my weary Monday-morning butt fifty miles north across the silvery Tay. My latest client was not in Dundee, nor due to appear in any other court within the Sheriffdom of Tayside, Central and Fife. Grace-Mary had tracked him down to the cells at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
Colin ‘Toffee’ McCowan didn’t look like a drugs courier, which was probably why he’d been chosen to be a drugs courier. He was a spritely sixty-something with a perma-tan and a weather-beaten face to show for his time served before the mast as a merchant seaman.
It was around eight years since I’d last met Toffee. That had been in the cells at Stirling Sheriff Court after his then unblemished record, combined with a heart-rending plea in mitigation by yours truly, had secured him a sentence of fifteen months’ imprisonment for couriering a kilo of Stan Blandy’s merchandise.
As he came walking though the court’s revolving door and across the courtyard towards me, he looked a lot happier than I remembered. Probably because he was a lot less in jail.
He didn’t notice me at first. Not until I stepped in front of him to bar his way.
‘Mr Munro. How you doing? What’s up?’
‘It’s not a case of what’s up,’ I said, ‘it’s a case of who’s out and why.’
‘Come again?’ He slipped a Rizla paper from its slim green packet and held a corner between his lips while he took a tin from his pocket and teased out a pinch of tobacco.
‘I heard you’d been caught with a car-boot-full of coke.’
Toffee replaced the tin in his jacket pocket and fashioned himself a rollie, very deftly for a man who had two badly deformed fingers on his left hand. He twisted one end and stuck the other in his mouth, face crinkling into a smile, tanned features contrasting with the white cigarette paper. ‘You heard wrong.’
‘Really? So why are you here?’
‘There was a misunderstanding.’ He sparked a match, put it to the end of his rollie, took a deep drag and exhaled. ‘Looks like I done a weekender for nothing.’
I didn’t think so. People with a couple of kilos of cocaine in the boot of their car didn’t collect get-out-of-jail-free cards, not unless they had been helping the police with their inquiries, and Toffee’s boss was a man who did not like being inquired into.
Toffee looked down at the black gown I had draped over my left arm. ‘You’ve not come for me, have you? Did big Stan send you?’
We were standing in the courtyard outside the Sheriff Court. There were lawyers, witnesses, accused persons, all coming and going. A police car pulled up on the double-yellows on Chambers Street to drop off a couple of cops. They alighted and looked to be heading our way.
‘Not here,’ I said. ‘Let’s walk.’
Toffee didn’t move. He took the smouldering rollie from his mouth. The wrinkles in his face had ironed themselves out and their colour had noticeably paled. ‘Does Stan know I was lifted?’
I walked on. Toffee caught up with me as I took a right onto George IV Bridge, the statue of Greyfriars Bobby across the street to my left. Some vandals had painted the wee dog’s head orange. Or perhaps it had been students, in which case it wasn’t vandalism, it was high-jinks and over-exuberance. I continued walking, heading towards the High Street. From there I could meander down to Waverley Station and catch the train back to Linlithgow.
Toffee fell in step beside me.
‘Stan doesn’t need to know about this, does he?’
‘About what?’
‘About me being her
e - in Edinburgh.’
‘Why would he care where you were? You’re a free man, aren’t you? Unless, of course, you’re free for a reason, in which case you may want to stow away on the next cargo ship bound for the Far East. And I don’t mean North Berwick.’
He thrust a folded sheet of paper at me. I took a look at it. It was a bail undertaking to return to court in three weeks, by which time the Crown would have decided whether to prosecute. Why wouldn’t they? What was there to think about? People caught with two kilos of cocaine didn’t receive bail undertakings and those with a previous analogous conviction were ineligible for bail, presumption of innocence or not.
‘What did you tell them?’
Toffee jerked his head back as though he’d been hit in the face by a stiff south-westerly. ‘Me? Nothing.’
‘I really hope you haven’t done anything stupid.’
‘You think I’d grass on big Stan?’
I waved the bail undertaking sheet under his nose. ‘Two kilos and you get this?’
Toffee stopped and pulled me back by the shoulder.
I turned to face him. ‘Stan didn’t know which court you were in. He told me you must have been lifted on the way to St Andrews. I’m pleased for you that you’re out, but how you did it, and why you did it, and what Stan will think about it all, that’s no business of mine.’
‘But what if he asks you what happened?’
‘I don’t know what happened. You’ll need to tell him.’
‘And what will I say about me being in Edinburgh?’
I waited until we had walked past a queue of people at a bus stop. ‘Tell him you got lost on the way to Fife. What difference does it make?’
I didn’t know why, but it seemed to make a big difference to Toffee. For an ancient mariner, he now had the ghastly complexion of someone with terminal sea-sickness. He pointed ahead to the end of the street. ‘How about we nick into Deacon Brodie’s for a wee rum to settle my stomach?’
It was ten o’clock in the morning and I had better things to do than sit in a boozer discussing the finer points of cocaine trafficking with a wizened, old, rum-soaked salt. Both reasons for my meeting with Toffee had evaporated. Firstly, his court proceedings had been postponed, which meant I was not being paid, and, secondly, there was now no possibility of him agreeing to take the blame for supplying Antonia Brechin.