Relatively Guilty (Best Defence series Book 1)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  Eventually, the ping of a bell announced our arrival on the third floor and the door slid open to reveal a woman, hair tied back in a bun and wearing a pencil skirt and twin-set. I suddenly remembered a library book I hadn’t returned. She introduced herself as Lucy Meadows. She was young and very nervous. A sheen of perspiration glistened on her brow and the thin hands that held the file of papers were trembling a little. I knew that all junior counsel were expected to do a three-year stint prosecuting. The money was relatively rubbish but certain duties were incumbent upon those who aspired to a silk gown. Still, there was junior counsel and then there was junior counsel. Were murders so commonplace these days that Crown Office let the kids deal with them? I shook one of her limp, slightly damp hands. It felt like putty in mine.

  You say you’ll drop the murder to culpable homicide, my dear? How about a breach of the peace?

  Leonard unwedged himself from the elevator doors and joined me in the corridor. ‘I was seconded here for a while when I was a P.F.’ he said. ‘Do they still send out at coffee break for millionaire’s shortbread from that place around the corner?’

  Young Miss Meadows ignored the question and showed us to a small room with a coombed ceiling and painted wood-chip on the walls. We sat down, defence on one side of the table, prosecution on the other. ‘I’ve asked Mr Crowe to join us,’ she said and, as though he’d been waiting to be announced, the door creaked open and in strolled Cameron Crowe. Nosferatu in pin-stripes.

  My heart sank. Cameron Crowe, a former colleague of mine, had been a know-it-all senior court assistant when I’d trained at Caldwell & Clark. Not long after I’d qualified as a solicitor, he’d left the Firm, moved to the dark side and joined the Fiscal Service. Things between us had never been particularly cosy but plunged sub-zero on the night of a Glasgow Bar Association dinner approximately three years previously. It was shortly after Cathleen Doyle had surgically removed my heart and around the time I had set out on a one man campaign to prevent further distillery closures. My own recollection of events was impaired by drink and the passage of time, but witnesses to the incident had testified to Crowe’s date for the evening, my favourite advocate, not yet Q.C., Fiona Faye, entwined with me in passionate embrace on the floor of the ladies cloakroom. Perhaps Malky and I weren’t so different. Except it had been heat of the moment for me when I’d snogged Crowe’s girlfriend; Malky had stolen mine in cold blood.

  Crowe had since called at the Bar and was now a full-time advocate-depute, one of the Lord Advocate’s representatives on earth and renowned for the ferocity of his prosecutions. Over the years we’d had numerous acrimonious encounters in various jurisdictions. Crowe wasn’t a man to bear a grudge lightly. I felt sure that the only person in the world he liked less than me was Fiona. Now I had to try and talk him into dropping a murder charge. My turn to sweat a little.

  Crowe took his seat opposite. Tall and slim, dark hair slicked back, the tailored suit that hung on his angular frame was a perfect fit. He contorted his features and manoeuvred his thin lips into the rictus of a moisturised cadaver.

  Leonard struggled out of his jacket and hung it on the back of his seat revealing dark rings of sweat around each oxter. The small room filled with his smell.

  ‘Now then, Mr Brophy,’ Crowe said, apparently oblivious to my presence. ‘Let’s make a start shall we?’ He pulled his colleague’s file of papers in front of him and extracted the murder Petition. ‘So what have we got?’ He took a pair of specs from his top pocket and put them on. ‘Ah, yes. Mrs Galbraith, in the bedroom, with the hatchet.’

  ‘And the screwdriver,’ Meadows chipped in.

  ‘Lucy’s our new girl,’ said Crowe, his smile never reaching his eyes. ‘She’s cutting her teeth on this case. I’ll be leading her, so when she told me you were coming in for a chat I thought it might be an idea if I tagged along.’ He locked eyes with me for a moment. My card was marked. He turned his stare to Leonard again, laid the Petition on the table and smoothed it flat with the back of a hand.

  I took a deep breath. I’d have to play this extremely canny. There would be no bulldozing Cameron Crowe into a soft plea.

  ‘Callum Galbraith was a brute,’ Leonard let fly. He spread out the photos of Isla Galbraith’s black-eye on the table. ‘He deserved all he got and we’re not leaving here until you agree to culpable homicide.’

  Crowe’s left eyelid lowered dangerously.

  ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘if you’d excuse us for a moment?’ A puzzled expression formed on Leonard’s fat face. It was still there after I’d dragged him bodily through the door and into the corridor. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I demanded to know.

  ‘I’m negotiating a plea.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re being a prat. Stay here, go around the corner for some millionaire’s shortbread, but do not go back into that room.’

  ‘Hey,’ he whined. ‘You can’t talk to me like that. I’m learned bloody counsel.’

  But I could talk to him any way I wanted and he knew it. I held the legal aid purse strings and junior counsel were two-a-penny.

  ‘Should we wait for Mr Brophy?’ Crowe asked when I returned and took my seat at the table.

  ‘Let’s not,’ I said.

  I could tell from young Meadow’s face that she was unhappy about defence counsel’s absence from discussions.

  ‘Lucy,’ I said. ‘What are the chances of a coffee?’

  Frowning, her face bright red, she looked to her senior for support.

  Crowe fixed me with a stare and held it until it began to hurt. ‘That would be great,’ he said. ‘White for me.’

  ‘Black. Three sugar,’ I said.

  Meadow’s pushed back her chair noisily, got to her feet and left the room, closing the door firmly behind her. Very firmly behind her.

  ‘Leonard Brophy?’ Crowe smirked.

  ‘Long story.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. In any case I expect you’ve come to tell me a different sorry tale.’

  ‘Isla Galbraith was a battered wife. I’ve seen her medical records. Callum Galbraith was a violent man. You must know he had a police disciplinary record.’

  Crowe sighed. ‘He had a fight with a fellow officer during a football match,’ that came as news to me, ‘and a minor incident with a juvenile offender,’ Crowe continued. ‘So what?’

  ‘It was more than a minor incident. He injured a twelve-year-old boy. Strathclyde Police paid compensation.’

  The man across the table from me blinked. He knew the significance of that settlement. Unlike the rest of us mere mortals the Police were immune from compensation claims purely by reason of negligence. There had to be evidence of ill-will or mal fides, as we lawyers liked to say when the Latin was upon us. If Strathclyde shelled out damages it would only have done so if there was good reason to believe the boy’s injury was down to more than accident or over-exuberance on the part of Callum Galbraith in the exercise of his duties.

  I forged ahead. ‘If we keep looking, how many more examples will we find of an officer prone to outbursts of temper?’ I collected the photos that were scattered across the table and shuffled them to a close-up of Isla’s bruised eye. ‘A man who could assault a colleague, injure a young boy and do this to a defenceless woman.’ I held the photo up in front of Crowe’s face. ‘Of course, we’ll have to query police recruitment practices. Psychological profiling. Training. Vetting policies. In the event of a trial, that is.’

  ‘Don’t try the smoke and mirrors routine on me,’ Crowe said. ‘The fact remains that your client murdered her husband.’

  ‘No – not murdered – killed. And she confessed to it. If we go to trial, what are you going to do? Spend a couple of days flashing post-mortem photos in the hope there’ll be enough on the jury sufficiently horrified to come back with a murder conviction? Puh-lease. Come the defence case, we’ll take a couple of weeks and ask why a police officer with documented anger management issues and a tendency to violence was allowed to
continue in his post. Who else knew he was a wife-beater? His colleagues? His superiors? Did someone turn a blind eye? And why are there so few high-ranking female officers, except on the telly? Institutional misogyny - makes quite a good sound-bite don’t you think? We’ll ask the jury to accept that Isla Galbraith’s actions were a clear case of diminished responsibility and in the meantime the name of Callum Galbraith and Strathclyde Police will be going down the shunky faster than last night's curry. We might even get a public enquiry out of it. I know how much the Justice Minister enjoys those.’

  ‘That’s quite a speech.’ Crowe pinched the bridge of his glasses, taking them off and folding them in his hand. ‘But you’re forgetting one thing. She plunged him through the head a dozen times with a screwdriver!’ He emphasised the point with a few rapid stabbing motions of his specs. ‘The woman is a murderer!’

  Crowe’s raised voice was a good sign. I was beginning to get to him. ‘A thirty-something nurse turned psycho? Doesn’t that sound to you like a woman who’s snapped? A woman whose ability to control her conduct was substantially impaired by reason of mental abnormality?’

  ‘Substantially impaired by reason of mental abnormality?’ he laughed. ‘When did you start reading law books?’

  I carried on regardless. ‘A normal woman. A gentle woman. Someone who’s devoted her life to caring for others just doesn’t do that sort of thing – not unless driven to it.’

  ‘Tell me. Who’s your senior?’ Crowe asked. ‘No, let me guess, Princess Fifi? Or have they withdrawn her equity card? If the woman were any more of a ham she’d be honey-glazed.’

  He was referring, of course, to Fiona Faye. I knew he still refused to speak to her, except when professionally necessary during the course of courtroom hostilities. Who’d have thought a drunken snog three years ago would have evoked such antipathy. It was crazy. They were both so able. While Crowe’s cold, clinical, logical approach could be relied on to drive out the most stubborn of reasonable doubts; jurors loved Fiona’s melodramatic, emotional performances. If I’d been looking to persuade a jury, then Fiona would have been a great choice as counsel for Isla Galbraith, but I wasn’t. I needed someone to persuade a High Court Judge that a woman who had killed her husband didn’t deserve to go to jail; that her particular circumstances mitigated in favour of clemency. Fiona was good but the gravitas of Ranald Kincaid Q.C., already on the inside track to the judiciary, made him the ideal candidate.

  ‘I’ve instructed the Dean on this one,’ I said matter-of-factly.

  The actual process for the appointment of a Queen’s Counsel is shrouded in mystery, but so far as I could glean, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates had a big say in the matter, drawing up a short-list to put before a panel of Court of Session judges, the winners going forward to the Lord President and onward for rubber-stamping by the First Minister of Scotland. Ranald Kincaid Q.C. was the Dean, on whose recommendation hung the destiny of many a silk robe. The fact he still languished in the junior ranks while big, blonde and blousy Fiona Faye had recently taken silk must really have been eating at Crowe. This was his chance to do his career a favour and show the top brass that he wasn’t the rabid prosecutor that everyone thought he was, but, rather, possessed those qualities: rationality, discernment and compassion that the Queen looked for in her Counsellors.

  Cameron Crowe was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. He replaced his specs into his top pocket, pushed his chair back and smiled like a snake. He stood, went to the door and opened it. Young Meadows arrived awkwardly carrying three mugs of coffee as we were walking out. Crowe escorted me to where Leonard was waiting by the lift doors. ‘Show me something to back these up…’ He gave the photographs back to me, simultaneously slamming the lift button with the flat of his hand. ‘And,’ he choked up the words, ‘I’ll think about a culp hom.’

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘Get a move on!’ I yelled to Malky who was lagging way behind me, reading out loud lines from the piece of paper in his hand. Friday night and we were late. We had already missed our intended train from Linlithgow because on the way to the station my brother kept stopping to make amendments to his script. Now, in Edinburgh and halfway up the High Street he paused again, chuckled and jotted something else down. ‘Hurry up,’ I called to him. This time he seemed to hear me and stuffed the scrap of paper inside his jacket or rather my jacket. In Malky’s haste to journey north he’d left his evening wear behind in Brighton. He was dead against hiring a suit, something to do with other people’s skin flakes and fungal infections, and fortunately – for him – my dinner suit was more or less a perfect fit; if he let the trousers ride down on his hips to give them a little more length and tightened the elastic adjustables on the waist.

  The ornate crowned-spire atop St Giles Cathedral loomed ahead as I quickened my westwards march along the Royal Mile. Malky broke into a trot, gaining on me, catching up as I veered left, side-stepping the globs of spit I couldn’t see in the twilight of the Old Town but knew to be always present on the Heart of Mid-Lothian, site of the former Tollbooth, which, as the name implied, was where the Town Council had collected tolls. In days of old the building had also served as a prison and a site for hangings, the heads of the more notorious victims displayed on spikes. Though the Tollbooth had been demolished nearly two hundred years ago, it was still the tradition to spit on the heart-shaped design set into the cobbles that marked the spot; whether as a sign of disrespect to the present Town Council or those long-departed criminals, I was never quite sure.

  ‘All set?’ I asked Malky.

  He tapped his breast pocket and pointed across the cobbled courtyard to the bright lights of the Signet Library. ‘Let’s rock.’

  ‘Robbie Munro and Malcolm Munro - guest speaker,’ I advised the doorman.

  The doorman touched the rim of his grey top hat. ‘Saw you play, sir,’ he told Malky, dipping in a shallow bow as he allowed us through the door and into the grand entrance hall. ‘We’re upstairs tonight,’ he said, still addressing Malky, one white-gloved hand extended in the direction of the magnificent staircase that linked the Lower and Upper libraries. It was truly a splendid interior.

  Malky looked awe-struck. ‘This Signet thing: nothing to do with swans then? Just that I had quite a good joke about two nuns and a duck.’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ I replied, not bothering to explain that the Signet was the private seal of the early Scottish Kings, and the Writers to the Signet were those authorised to supervise its use and, later, to act as clerks to the Courts. These days, the WS Society was a professional body for lawyers, membership of which cost a few hundred a year and granted access to an excellent library. I suspected most in the Society already had enough law books and paid the subs so they could slap an extra couple of letters after their name: W.S.

  Malky stood gazing about him. He took the piece of paper from his pocket and scored a line through part of it.

  The doorman cleared his throat gently. ‘I don’t think they’ve sat down to table yet.’

  We took the hint and set off up the stairs, rushing past several handsome portraits, including two Raeburns, not that I fully appreciated the works of art at the time, being more interested in getting to our seats before the seared scallops and coral sauce arrived. Upon reaching the top landing we were met by Ranald Kincaid Q.C., dressed in dinner suit and gripping the stem of a wine glass full of freshly squeezed orange juice.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked impatiently, eyeing up my dad’s ancient but recently aired and ironed evening wear; not a bad fit on me, only let down slightly by a pale blue shirt with a frill down the front.

  Without waiting to hear the excuse I’d been working on, Kincaid led Malky along the corridor to a pair of enormous wooden doors at the end. He opened one of them. The sound of chattering and laughing leaked out. In the soft glow of candlelight I glimpsed two rows of diners, men and women, either side of a long table on which crystal and bright silverware twinkled and glinted. That was about all I ma
naged to see before Ranald Kincaid ushered Malky though the gap between the doors and it closed behind them.

  I stood staring at the rich dark wood and was wondering if I should go in or knock first when one of the doors opened a crack and Kincaid stuck his face out at me. ‘Carriages at midnight.’ He shut the door again.

  I began my descent of the staircase, looking over my shoulder lest there had been some mistake, the doors would open and I be summoned to the table.

  ‘Splendid isn’t it?’An old man in tartan trews and dinner jacket tottered up the stairs towards me. He had a florid face that I found vaguely familiar. In one liver-spotted hand he clutched a very full glass of something darkly amber. We met on the mezzanine landing where he paused, leaned his back against the banister and tilted his tumbler at a portrait in oils that hung on the wall above us.

  ‘Lord President Hope,’ he said, in a phlegmy voice. ‘Everyone oohs and aahs at the Raeburns, but for me no one can render acute observant character like good old Sir John Watson Gordon, wouldn’t you agree?’

  He was asking the wrong person. The only Lord Hope I knew had a portrait in the consulting rooms further down the Royal Mile. A painting that suggested he was not a man to let the whimsies of fashion dictate his choice of spectacles. After what most would agree was too short a spell as Lord President he’d taken his big, round, tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and shuffled off down to the House of Lords.

  Not Hope of Craighead,’ I was corrected, when I expressed my confusion. ‘The first Lord President Hope. Wonderful judge. You’ll recall his remarks in Auld v. Hall & Co. on the transfer of moveable property by constructive delivery?’

  I must have missed that lecture at Uni; lucky escape by the sounds of it.

  ‘Yes,’ sighed the man in the tartan trousers,’ eighteen-eleven and obiter dictum but it’s still the law to this day.’