Relatively Guilty (Best Defence series Book 1)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  ‘What I mean is: how long do you think you can hide a six foot carrot-top in a village this size?’

  Eddie puffed furiously on his rollie. ‘What makes you think I’m hiding anyone? What are you? Polis? Way off your patch are you not?’

  Taking him by the arm, I led Eddie away a short distance from Zoë. ‘Isla.’ I jerked my head in the direction of my receptionist.

  Eddie looked over my shoulder at her. My client’s name produced a faint flicker of recognition in his walnut expression. If there were two Scots men living in the same town in the middle of rural France they were bound to have met, and what else was there to do but drink and reminisce about the old country and loves lost.

  Eddie’s face creased into a wide smile. The roll-up between his lips stood to attention. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ He looked about the street as though we might be under surveillance. ‘Fergus is taking a party up to the 16th Century windmill at Raire. It’s about an hour’s paddle from here. If you like I’ll take you there. They do a very nice homemade cidre and if you’re still hungry…’ he looked at the fragment of pastry I held in my hand, ‘they’ll whip you up a crêpe miele in no time.’

  Tempting though the idea of cider and a honey-crepe was, I didn’t see the point of setting off only to meet Fergus coming back. An explanation as to why I wanted to speak to him, and why I’d felt compelled to lie to his colleague, was better done on terra firma than aboard passing canoes in the middle of a salt marsh. So, instead, we sat under the awning waiting for Fergus’s return and staving off dehydration with ice-cold bottles of Kronenbourg 1664. After half an hour or so some fluffy white clouds floated in front of the sun and we went for a walk in a small park that was accessible by a path at the side of the building. Eddie liked to talk and it helped kill the time listening to him recount his life story in the deep gravelly tones of a man whose vocal chords were corroded by years of rolling tobacco and cheap cognac.

  Eddie hailed from Glasgow; Anderson Cross. Salleratine had been intended as only a temporary stop-over on the grand tour of Europe he’d embarked on six years before, having packed in a career as an art teacher at a secondary school in Renfrew. Travelling south through France, Eddie had found work as a guide on Le Voyage du Sel and toiled a summer at the end of which the proprietor had taken ill and died.

  ‘His widow asked me if I wanted to take over. I thought what the hell, and here I am. I pay the old lady an agreed sum every year and keep the rest.’

  It sure beat grinding out a living at the Sheriff Court.

  ‘The money’s not too bad,’ he explained. ‘A couple of parties a day and I’m doing all right. Trouble is, it’s seasonal work. There aren’t many tourists outwith summertime and the marshes often flood in the winter. Last year there was so much rain Sallertaine was an island, cut off from the mainland - just like it used to be hundreds of years ago.’

  The sun re-appeared and we sat down on the grass in the shade of a row of lime trees, reviving our parched throats with leisurely swigs from our bottles of lager. To pass the time, Zoë asked Eddie to tell us more about Le Voyage du Sel and he was happy to oblige.

  ‘The land all around here is clay,’ he said. ‘Hundreds of years ago the sea used to come in and form pools after a high tide. When the water evaporated it left salt behind. Sometime around the 11th Century the townsfolk realised that if they controlled the flow of the tide they could direct it into shallow clay salt pans, let the sun do its work and literally rake in the salt and the money that came with it. Convoys of ships from England, Scandinavia, the Baltic States, Prussia, Flanders used to come here to purchase L’or blanc, the white gold.’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘Out there is a labyrinth of canals that drain the marshes and regulate the tide so that just enough sea comes in to fill the salt pans. Salt mines and desalination plants put an end to it as a serious business around the start of the seventeenth century. Nowadays only a few of the locals make salt the traditional way. They mix it with dried onion, herbs and garlic and sell it to the tourists.’

  ‘And what do you do when you’re not paddling visitors about?’ Zoë asked.

  ‘Something completely different.’ He jumped up taking Zoë’s hands and pulling her to her feet. ‘Come with me.’

  We climbed to the top of a small hill. On the other side was a pond and in the centre stood a ten foot bronze sculpture from which a fountain of water sprayed.

  ‘Like it? I’ve been commissioned by a few towns roundabout,’ he said, proudly. ‘Did my first piece of public art for a shopping centre in Liverpool when I left art college there. I did this one last winter. It’s nice to have my work recognised by what I now regard as my home town.’ He cocked his head at the fountain. ‘Do you know what it is?’

  I was all for contemporary art but the metal monstrosity in the pond was so severely abstract that I needed a clue.

  ‘Think sea,’ Eddie hinted.

  I studied the sheets of bronze, shaped, scored and twisted together to look like…

  ‘A fish?’ ventured Zoë.

  ‘Very good,’ Eddie said. ‘But not any fish,’ he laughed. ‘A particular fish – the Twin-Fish.’

  ‘Very nice.’ I said, none the wiser and wondering how soon I could stop admiring the contraption without appearing bored or disinterested.

  ‘Have you not heard of the Twin-Fish?’ Neither Zoë nor I had the foggiest. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. Loch Ness has its Monster: Sallertaine has the Twin-Fish. Not quite so dramatic, I’ll grant you, and like all good French myths there must also be a moral. The story of the Twin-Fish is all to do with the importance of la cascade de vie.’

  ‘The waterfall of life?’ I got in first before Zoë and wished I hadn’t when she gave me a look of annoyance.

  ‘Sort of,’ Eddie said. ‘The Twin-Fish symbolises the belief that everything in nature is connected to everything else.’

  Eddie may have been a teacher of art but he’d missed his vocation; he should have taught history.

  ‘It’s like this,’ he went on. ‘Many of the towns in the area used to be islands in the Loire estuary. Sallertaine, St Hilaire, Challans. To this day Noirmoutier only has a land-link to the mainland at low tide. The Twin-Fish is said to have been a fish native to these waters: a nasty, ugly-looking creature with two heads and two tails, joined at the hip - if fish have hips. They came in their shoals to the new channels that had been dug but the people around didn’t like them; scared of their looks, their spiky fins and needle sharp teeth. Fortunately, because of the Twin-Fish’s unusual design, it swam erratically and was easy to catch in the narrow channels. Soon the species was completely wiped out, which was unfortunate because the brackish water in the channels made an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. What people hadn’t realised was that the Twin-Fish, ugly and scary though it might have appeared, fed on mosquito larvae. There followed a mass outbreak of malaria and although the citizens of Sallertaine grew rich, with the Twin-Fish gone they died in their thousands. The lesson is that no matter how big or small, beautiful or ugly, good or bad we all play our part in la cascade de vie.’

  ‘You can’t have your gateau and eat it too,’ I said. No-one laughed. Eddie had become quite serious.

  ‘It’s the same story today,’ he continued. ‘Mankind is destroying the world. When are we going to learn that we can’t mess about with nature - that every plant, every creature serves a purpose?’

  I could imagine Eddie back in the seventies, an art student in Liverpool, long hair, straggly beard, Che Guevara T-shirt.

  ‘The same goes for the way we treat each other,’ he banged on in earnest, so much so I was beginning to wonder if there was more than just rolling tobacco inside his Rizla papers. ‘From the richest to the poorest, highest to the lowest, every person’s actions, good or bad, affect someone else – that is la cascade de vie. I’m a big fan of John Donne and like he said, no man is an island.’

  Voices from the street brought the sermon to an end. A party of tourists fresh from a ca
noe expedition were walking along, laughing and jostling, glimpses of multi-coloured life jackets and paddles visible every now and again as the group passed gaps in the buildings facing onto the street.

  ‘That’ll be Fergus now,’ Eddie said, snapping out of it. He reached out a hand. ‘Come on, Isla.’

  Zoë looked puzzled. I stepped in between the two. ‘Not in front of all those people, Eddie. Is there somewhere private we could go? We’d like to surprise him.’

  A truth that’s told with bad intent, beats any lie you can invent.

  Not John Donne: William Blake.

  CHAPTER 48

  I parked the hire car outside a tiny white-washed building with wooden shutters on the window, a red-tiled roof and a jungle of a front garden. There was a small green enamel plaque at the side of the door in the shape of a thistle.

  ‘Fergus is staying here,’ Eddie said, dismounting the bright yellow scooter that had transported him half a mile further down the main street. ‘Just ‘til he sells up in Scotland and gets his money through to buy a place here.’

  The front door key was cunningly concealed under a flower pot on the window sill. Eddie handed it to us. ‘Help yourself to a wee refreshment. When Fergus is finished stowing the gear I’ll send him along.’

  I let Zoë into the cottage and we entered a living area which also served as kitchen and dining-room. There was even a bed in the corner. Zoë lay down on it and closed her eyes. The windows were shuttered, blocking out most of the daylight. The room was dark and cool. I took a bottle of beer from the fridge and plonked myself down on a chair by an oak table that was striped with slices of sunshine and shadow. I had time. Time to organise my thoughts. Time to put the finishing touches to a little theory I’d been hatching about how Fergus Galbraith had killed his brother and fled to France, leaving behind my client, the woman he had so callously seduced, to take the rap. For all I knew it might even have been true. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time but you only needed to fool eight on a jury of fifteen to secure a not proven verdict.

  After a while, the straight-backed kitchen chair grew uncomfortable. I swung back, put my feet on the table and in doing so knocked over the now empty beer bottle.

  Fergus must have fallen off the wagon, I thought, as I righted my chair and caught the green bottle before it rolled off the edge of the table and smashed on the terracotta tiles. Else why would he have a fridge full of little green bottles and a rack of red wine in the corner of the room? So much for recognising his problem and doing something about it.

  The words of Norrie, the Highland cop, as we’d bounced up the dirt track to Ardfern Croft, came back to me. And a fine lad is Fergus. If he puts his mind to something, you know he’ll see it through to the finish.

  I suddenly had a thought. I needed to check something out before I started questioning Fergus Galbraith. I hadn’t brought Isla’s file, just a plastic wallet containing a few important papers. It was yellow and see-through, no smiley sun or have a nice day message on the front, but I was sure Ranald Kincaid Q.C. would not have approved. I rummaged among the various documents hoping to find a copy of the Crown autopsy report and in particular the toxicology findings. It wasn’t there. I took out my mobile and rang Andy.

  ‘Robbie? I thought you were in France?’

  ‘I am. Where are you?’

  ‘Hospitality with your dad and Malky at the Linlithgow Rose versus Bo’ness United pre-season friendly.’

  Friendly? Between the neighbouring towns of Linlithgow and Bo’ness? I sincerely doubted it. Still, as luck would have it, Andy was in Linlithgow. Perfect.

  ‘Forget the football. Remember that junkie client of yours? I want you to find out the name of that drug that makes you sick if you drink alcohol. Once you’ve got it call me right back.’

  A loud roar crashed down the phone.

  ‘One-nil, the Rosie-Posie,’ said a jubilant Andy after a full minute of what sounded like absolute bedlam.

  ‘Never mind the football,’ I told him. ‘This is urgent.’

  ‘Okay, okay, take a chill pill. The stuff you’re talking about is called Antabuse.’

  ‘No, that’s the trade name. I want the generic name. There’s a British National Formulary in the office. Look it up.’

  ‘Come off it, Robbie. The second half’s hardly started. I still have most of a pie to eat and there’s a free bar at full-time.’

  ‘This is very important.’

  ‘Problem,’ Andy said, a triumphant note to his voice. ‘I don’t have the office key.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to contact Grace-Mary.’

  The thought of disturbing my secretary on a weekend obviously sparked Andy’s thinking process. ‘Hold on. Maybe I won’t need it. I’ll call you right back – but you’re buying my next top-up.’

  Five minutes later my mobile juddered on the wooden table.

  ‘Got it,’ Andy announced. ‘Can you believe it? One of the track-side sponsors is a pharmacy. You know that outfit just along from us at the cross?’

  ‘Andy.’ I was trying to be patient. ‘Do you have the name of the drug?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m coming to that. You see their number is on the advert and so I just called them and asked. They were very helpful.’

  Another roar assaulted my eardrum. It wasn’t quite as loud as the last.

  ‘Oh no,’ Andy groaned ‘Penalty, Bo’ness.’

  ‘Andy. I can sack you by telephone you know.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘That would be a clear breach of the ACAS disciplinary procedure guidelines and almost certain to constitute an unfair dismissal.’

  ‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘But I could kill you when I get back.’

  Silence then a muffled roar, presumably from the away fans.

  ‘Andy!’

  ‘Disulfiram. Can you hear me, Robbie? I said Disulfiram. That what you wanted to know?’

  I cancelled the call. Disulfiram. That was the drug Isla Galbraith had tried to top herself with. Where did she get her hands on a drug prescribed for the treatment of alcohol dependence? Apart from our chat in the Jinglin’ Geordie after the discovery of her forged medical notes, she’d shown no signs of being a heavy drinker, and having viewed the medical records for Callum Galbraith since practically his first nappy rash, I knew he was no alky either. The only conclusion I could draw was that the tablets Isla had O. D.’d on belonged to Fergus. He had been in the house. Had he left in a hurry and forgotten to take his medication with him? I sensed a piece of the jig-saw slot into place.

  I paced up and down the room, racking my brain. There was something wrong, some piece of information I had overlooked. I wished I had brought the case file with me but all I had in my plastic folder was a copy of the indictment and some notes from my meetings with Isla.

  I thought about phoning Andy for a brain-storming session. ‘Sorry to trouble you, again Andy but there’s something bothering me about Isla Galbraith’s case and I can’t think what it is, can you?’ He’d think I’d gone mad. Fact is though, he would have tried to help. That’s what I liked about him. He might complain, but at least he was keen. Most new recruits to the legal profession were only interested in the big bucks from corporate work and didn’t want to sully their hands with crime and legal aid. I’d been lucky to find someone who could get all excited about a trip to the Justice of the Peace Court and thought it a treat to go snooping for information at a funeral.

  I stopped pacing. Yes, that was it. Something Andy had found out at Callum Galbraith’s funeral. I tried to remember our conversation. Golf. Callum Galbraith’s last day on earth had been spent playing golf with his old mates from Police College and he’d gone home feeling ill. His pals had been worried about him driving after having had a few pints. Maybe Callum had been drinking on top of Disulfiram. Was that why he’d felt sick? No – wait - that couldn’t be right. I kicked a leg of the table in frustration. I was sure the toxicology report had recorded his blood work as negative for ethanol, which m
eant either Andy’s information was wrong, and Callum hadn’t been drinking, or—?

  A noise outside. Zoë must have heard it too. She rolled off the bed, went over and peeked through the slats of the shutters.

  ‘I think it’s him,’ she whispered. ‘He’s coming up the path.’

  The front door creaked open slowly.

  ‘Isla?’A man’s voice. A Scottish accent.

  I didn’t move. Eyes closed, I searched for the next piece of the jig-saw. If Andy’s info was correct and Callum Galbraith had been drinking, then…

  Footsteps on the tiled floor.

  … either the toxicology report was wrong. Or…

  My eyes were wide open now. A man came into the room; a baguette tucked under one arm, a newspaper clutched in his hand. He was around six feet three, wearing navy blue tracksuit bottoms and a grubby white T-shirt. His face was covered in freckles. The hair poking out from beneath his sweat-stained faded blue baseball cap was not auburn or strawberry blonde or even Viking sunset, it was see-you-Jimmy ginger.

  Standing with her back to the window, the late afternoon sun slashing through the shutters and into the room, Zoë would have appeared to him in silhouette.

  ‘Isla? Is it really you?’ He threw the loaf and newspaper onto the table and approached at first hesitatingly, then eagerly, smiling broadly, arms outstretched. When he was a few feet away from Zoë he stopped and squinted. ‘You’re not Isla.’

  I rose from the table and walked over to him. I could see he was wondering who I was, what was going on. Me too. I had tried so hard to track down Fergus Galbraith. Gone all the way to France just to speak to him. I had so many questions to ask – and now that it turned out he wasn’t here: I was delighted.

  ‘And you’re not Fergus Galbraith,’ I said, with a sweep of my arm knocking the baseball cap from his head to reveal a small patch of shiny white skin standing out amidst the freckles on the side of his face. It was situated directly over what everyone else would have called the temple but which an autopsy report would refer to as the sphenoid bone.