Relatively Guilty (Best Defence series Book 1)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  ‘Caldwell & Clark won’t touch it,’ he told me. ‘Don’t do crime any more. Not good for their corporate image. I didn’t know you’d left there otherwise I’d have come straight here.’

  I adopted a pained expression and rubbed the back of my neck. ‘I don’t know. I’m kind of busy…’

  ‘Please, Robbie.’

  Okay, that was enough playing hard to get. A reasonably-sized brown envelope and I’d be there with bells on. I was preparing to reluctantly agree and start talking money when Kieran came closer and put his face up to mine. I could smell the tobacco on his breath.

  ‘I know Dechlan is behind it,’ he said, ‘and I know you and him are not exactly on the best of terms at the minute because of yer man there.’ He took a final drag and pinged the stub of his cigarette on the ground at Malky’s feet. ‘But Dechlan’s not me. Me and you, we’re solid. Do this for Angie and I’ll not forget it. I‘ll sort something out for your brother.’

  ‘Then I’ll see what I can do,’ I said.

  He lit another cigarette with a series of rapid puffs. ‘Good. I’ll pick you up the morn at noon.’

  CHAPTER 19

  We arrived in the ‘Honest Toon’, Wednesday, at the back of one. Kieran Doyle parked his Jag outside the Sheriff Court, not far from the sea front, and I went for a walk, glad to be away from his chain-smoking and Mr Hoop’s incessant whistling. Angie’s case wasn’t due to call until two and I needed peace for creative thought so that I could conjure up some faintly plausible grounds in favour of bail.

  The problem with bail was that it was one big buck-passing exercise. Although granted more or less automatically when the prosecution didn’t object, the Crown hated the bad publicity that followed when persons accused of serious offences were released, or, worse still, offended while on bail. Accordingly, P.F.’s preferred to oppose bail, thus placing the onus and potential wrath of the newspapers squarely with the Court. Which, in turn, was why we defence agents had to be ready to step in and hit the Sheriff with tales of sick grannies, pregnant burds and exciting job opportunities that would all suffer terribly were the accused to be remanded in custody.

  In Angie Doyle’s case I had my work well and truly cut out for me. Where firearms were concerned, almost any Sheriff would err on the side of cowardice, refuse bail and let the accused take their chances with an appeal to the High Court. The boys at Parliament House earned the big bucks; if the accused was to be released they might as well risk the tabloid flack. Although her clean record meant the odds on Angie being granted High Court bail were fairly good, she would have to spend a week in custody awaiting her appeal and that wouldn’t go down at all well with her parents. It was perfectly clear that my best line of attack was to soft-soap the P.F. into agreeing bail. Easier said than done. Or so I thought, until, through a coffee shop window, I spied a familiar face which at that precise moment was being crammed with a fudge doughnut.

  The face and doughnut, it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began, belonged to Leonard Brophy. A former procurator fiscal-depute, Leonard had resigned on grounds of ill-health, joined the Scottish Executive and done the same thing there. No-one could ever accuse the civil service of scrimping when it came to paid sick-leave.

  ‘Robbie. Long time no see.’ Leonard pushed a plate of cakes out of my reach. One thing for sure, a life time of being proper poorly hadn’t ruined his appetite.

  How’s it going?’ I asked, once I’d waved the waitress over and ordered a coffee that I hoped she might add to Leonard’s bill.

  ‘As a matter of fact I think I’m coming down with the ‘flu or something.’

  ‘So what you doing these days?’ I asked, fingers crossed that he’d come back with the answer I was looking for.

  ‘I’m at the Bar now, did you not know?’

  I didn’t, but wasn’t entirely surprised. The Faculty of Advocates was made up of lawyers who were either very gifted or extremely unemployable. The former were snowed-under with work. I suspected Leonard rarely saw a sharp frost.

  ‘At the Bar? You’ll be raking it in then,’ I said, keeping a straight face. At that moment the only thing Leonard was raking in was a fondant fancy. If my hunch was correct, the reason he was fighting off a sniffle down in deepest, darkest Ayrshire was to keep the wolf from the door by temp-fiscalling. Self-employment: the cure for most workplace ailments.

  ‘Can’t complain,’ he said, popping a chocolate truffle into his mouth and pouring the loose hundreds-and-thousands in after it. He crumpled the paper cake-case in his hand. ‘My clerk’s got me some work as an ad hoc.’

  With P.F. deputes forever going off on holidays, sick-leave, to have babies or find proper jobs, the Procurator Fiscal Service was constantly under-staffed and turned to the Faculty of Advocates for assistance. Regular Fiscal-deputes hated ad hocs for two main reasons; firstly, they were paid a lot more, though they generally knew a lot less, and, secondly, because they were only temping and not trying to make a career of it, they could actually exercise discretion in the cases they prosecuted since they didn’t have to go back to the office and face some fire-breathing senior-depute ranting on about Crown Office guidelines.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Leonard asked.

  ‘A Petition,’ I said. ‘Something to do with guns.’

  ‘Guns?’

  I suspected that, true to form, Leonard hadn’t bothered to glance at the papers yet.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The accused’s just a wee girl, from a decent family. It’s all some kind of a terrible misunderstanding.’

  ‘Guns? As in firearms?’ He frowned deeply over an iced gingerbread square. ‘Not handguns?’

  ‘Just a few. I was wondering… I don’t suppose you’ll be opposing bail in the circumstances.’

  The waitress returned with my coffee and set down a saucer with a piece of paper on it weighted down by a pandrop.

  Leonard picked up the bill, brows furrowed, deep in thought, some chocolate sprinkles still stuck to his lips.

  ‘Here, let me get that,’ I said tugging the bill from between his fingers.

  ‘Bail? For handguns? I don’t know about that.’

  This was going to prove more difficult than I’d first thought. I smiled up at the waitress. ‘Bring us a couple of those strawberry shortcakes will you pet?'

  CHAPTER 20

  The accused came up the stairs from the cells handcuffed to a custody officer and stood in the dock. Petition cases called in private so her father had been told to wait outside.

  Angie Doyle had been in custody for more than thirty-six hours. By law accused persons were brought to court on the first lawful day after arrest, but since she’d been lifted just after midnight, Monday into Tuesday, the next lawful day was Wednesday and by the time the Fiscal had prepared the paperwork and the Sheriff Clerk had it processed into the court system, it was well into the afternoon before her case called.

  ‘Are you Angela Bernadette Doyle?’ asked the clerk. The accused curled a lip in confirmation.

  ‘For the tape please,’ the clerk said.

  The prisoner tutted. ‘Yes.’

  The contempt in my client’s reply would not have been lost on the Sheriff but he chose to let it go without comment. ‘Sit down,’ he said and scanned the charge on the Petition which libelled a contravention of the Firearms Act and concerned the discovery of six handguns in my client’s luggage after her car had attracted the interest of the police. Maybe it had been some kind of routine check due to the lateness of the hour, or perhaps the car registration showed up as suspicious on the PNC; whatever, the vehicle had been well away from the ferry port at Stranraer and into Ayrshire before it came to the attention of the police. The legality of that stop and search might have been the basis of a defence but, that aside, I had a sneaking suspicion we were dealing with a classic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ set-up, once an extremely popular smuggling method and which, like old pop-singers, foot and mouth and economic recession, was prone to comebacks.


  As far as I could recall the procedure went something like this: Mr Big hires two mules: Juliet, who is given a rucksack full of contraband, in this case shooters, and Romeo who is given an identical rucksack full of women’s clothing. They travel alone. If Juliet is unlucky enough to be stopped and searched, she feigns ignorance and puts the whole thing down to a mix-up over luggage during a brief encounter with a young man she met on the crossing. The police then check the passenger list, pay Romeo a visit and lo and behold he does indeed have a rucksack full of women’s undies. Hey presto, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, reasonable doubt. As for Romeo, he’s also in the clear. He denies any knowledge of guns or a mix-up. He hasn’t been found in possession of anything criminal and what a man chooses to carry in his luggage is his own business. It’s an Exocet missile of a defence; even though the Crown can see it coming a mile off there’s nothing they can do about it.

  Yes, a classic Romeo and Juliet, that’s how it looked to me. The Prosecution would have felt obliged to charge someone and Angie had been found with the guns in her possession, but, unless someone had been careless with fingerprints or their DNA, once I had Angie kitted out in a pretty frock and in front of a jury, I could see little prospect of a conviction. I climbed to my feet.

  ‘Miss Doyle makes no plea or declaration M’Lord,’ I said after I’d introduced myself to the Sheriff and handed the clerk a bail application form that I’d completed earlier, ‘and I seek her liberation on bail.’

  ‘What’s the Crown’s attitude?’ asked the Sheriff.

  Leonard Brophy shook his head. ‘Not opposed.’

  The Sheriff glanced down at the Petition. ‘What did you say the Crown’s position was, Mr Fiscal?’

  The P.F. swallowed hard as though a chunk of strawberry shortcake had stuck in his throat. ‘No opposition, M’Lord.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the Sheriff. ‘If the Crown is content, who am I to disagree? Bail standard conditions.’

  The clerk confirmed the grant of bail and continued the case for further enquiry. The Crown now had eleven months to decide whether or not to serve an indictment. With a cheery wave to the P.F., I followed Angie down to the cells where we sat at a small, bolted to the floor table, waiting for the clerk to print off the bail papers.

  ‘Get your money easy, don’t you?’ my young client sneered.

  It was hard to believe this was Cat’s cousin. She was pretty all right, and there was a vague family resemblance, but take away the coloured contacts, dyed hair, the peaches and cream make-up and you could have sparked matches off her.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ I asked.

  ‘The police? I said it was all a big mistake. I must have picked up the wrong bag.’

  ‘Then it wouldn’t be a good idea for you and Romeo to be seen together. Not until after the trial.’

  She didn’t say anything at first. Romeo and Juliet? Maybe it was called something else these days. She narrowed the blue eyes that peered out from beneath the fringe of her blonde bob. ‘Thanks for the advice but I’m I big girl, I’ll do what I like – okay?’

  The bail papers arrived. ‘Did my Uncle Dexy send you?’ Angie asked, signing in triplicate whilst a female Reliance officer went to fetch her belongings.

  ‘No. Your dad.’

  The first sign of emotion. ‘He’s not here is he?’

  ‘Outside.’

  She sucked in air through her teeth. ‘Tell him I’ll make my own way back to Glasgow.’

  I stood up. ‘You’re a big girl. Tell him yourself.’

  I left my client to collect her belongings and went out to find Kieran Doyle pacing up and down in front of the building, smoking furiously like an expectant father, which, I suppose, he was. The young guy in the hooped top, Romeo to Angie Doyle’s Juliet, was sitting on the stone steps that led down to the pavement. When Kieran saw me he threw his cigarette away.

  ‘She’ll be out in a minute,’ I told him.

  He fell back against one of the Ionic columns that supported the façade of the building, exhaled in relief and put another cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘I’ll not forget this,’ he said.

  I wasn’t intending to give him the chance.

  The front door to the Sheriff Court opened and Angie Doyle walked out. Her dad spat out the un-lit cigarette, rushed over and hugged her. Then he held her at arm’s length. ‘What have I told you?’

  ‘It’s all right, Dad.’

  ‘No it’s not all right. Guns? This is down to your Uncle Dexy, isn’t it?’

  Romeo looked anxious but Angie just answered her father’s question with a shrug. She was no grass.

  I tapped Kieran on the shoulder. ‘She’s out. Now I’d like you to take me back to my office and I’d like to get paid. Though not necessarily in that order.’

  ‘You’ll get your money.’

  People who said, ‘you’ll get your money,’ worried me, mainly because it was something I said quite a lot myself, usually when I didn’t have any.

  ‘You’ve not got it? You didn’t bring any cash?’

  Kieran’s face flushed. Atop his head a tendril of nylon hair broke free from the rest of the gang and waved gently in the light summer breeze blowing in off the Irish Sea. I walked down the steps. He came after me. ‘I told you – you’ll get paid.’

  ‘And Malky? What about him and Dexy?’

  Kieran winced. ‘That’s going to be a wee bit more tricky.’

  At the pavement I turned to face him again. ‘Tell you what then - don’t bother.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The money,’ I heard myself say. ‘Keep it and I’ll do Angie’s trial for free.’

  ‘What is this? What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying, I got your precious daughter out of custody and I’m ready to make sure she doesn’t get convicted of possession of handguns, which as you know carries a minimum five year sentence.’

  ‘And you don’t want paid?’

  ‘No. I’d like to be paid but I’d like it even more if your big brother would leave my big brother alone.’

  Kiernan shook his head. ‘I know I said I’ll try and help, but the thing with Malky, that’s Dechlan’s business. You’re talking about the death of his daughter.’

  ‘And I’m talking about the liberty of yours.’ Kieran walked over to the car. I went after him. ‘You promised if I helped Angie you’d do something to help Malky.’

  ‘I said I’d try and I will but it’s not that easy. Dechlan and me are having some problems right now. I’m not sure if he’ll listen to me. And now there’s this thing with Angie. I’m not happy. I know he’s behind it. That one there…’ he nodded over to the car where Romeo was already in the front passenger seat. ‘He doesn’t take a dump unless Dechlan gives him the bog roll.’

  He walked to the car. I followed. ‘Kieran, you didn’t say anything about trying, you said you’d sort something out. That’s the reason I came down here. You said—’

  Kieran banged the bonnet with his fist. ‘Okay, okay.’ He composed himself after his momentary outburst. Squared up his hair. ‘I’ll do what I can - all right?’

  Father and daughter were dropped off in a leafy avenue on the south side of Glasgow. Kieran had phoned home shortly after we left Ayr and was met by his wife who looked as though she had been standing in the street waiting ever since he’d made the call. As soon as Angie was out of the car her mum was all over her. The girl wriggled free and ran into the house. Kieran hugged and kissed his wife and they went in after her. A few minutes later, Kieran returned to the car. He tapped on the window. I rolled it down.

  ‘Thanks again, Robbie’ he said, slipping me an envelope. ‘The boy will take you back to Linlithgow.’ He walked away.

  ‘Kieran,’ I called after him. ‘If Dexy won’t listen to you who will he listen to?’ He kept walking. ‘I said, who will Dexy listen to?’

  He stopped, turned and walked slowly back to the car. From his jacket he took out his wallet and removed a busin
ess card.

  ‘I’ll tell him to expect you,’ he said and threw it at me through the open window.

  CHAPTER 21

  The University of Edinburgh’s Old College on Chambers Street, next door to the Royal Museum of Scotland, was where I’d studied back in the day. Then, the prospect of a career in criminal law seemed so exciting, so glamorous. Fast forward ten years or so to a Thursday afternoon to find me directly across the street in a Crown Office elevator, juddering my way to the third floor.

  I closed my eyes. I’d never been all that keen on lifts. Dangling above certain death in a box on a string always made me contemplate my mortality rather more than was healthy for a man of my relatively tender years. As soon as I entered the wood-panelled interior and watched the door slide shut, I felt uneasy. The compartment was so small and cramped it felt like being trapped inside a fat person’s coffin; a thought made all the more disconcerting by the fact I had brought with me my very own fat person in the corpulent and heavily-perspiring shape of Leonard Brophy, who at that moment seemed to be sucking in far more than his fair share of the limited oxygen supply.

  Junior counsel’s presence on this occasion stemmed directly from my excursion to Ayr the previous day. A strawberry shortcake had not been enough to persuade the plump advocate, in his capacity as ad-hoc P.F., that Kieran Doyle’s gun-running daughter was a candidate for bail and in desperation I’d offered him the chance of junioring to Ranald Kincaid Q.C. in Isla’s murder case. It was the sort of opportunity that would seldom come Leonard’s way and, not surprisingly, he’d jumped at it, meaning I was stuck with him for the time being.

  Leonard’s first engagement as Junior counsel for the defence in Her Majesty’s Advocate against Isla Galbraith was to accompany me to Crown Office, where I had arranged a meeting with Crown counsel to discuss a possible resolution. The Lord Advocate’s Deputes could be a bit touchy and preferred not to discuss a case with the defence solicitor unless their opposite number from the Faculty of Advocates was also present, so I’d asked Leonard along. There was nothing your average junior liked better than a consultation fee, except, perhaps, in Leonard’s case at any rate, cakes.