Bad Debt, page 11
I heard Grace Mary arrive dead on five to nine. At nine she came through to my office.
‘I’m innocent.’ I thought we might as well get that fact nailed down from the start.
‘Innocent? I don’t think so, Robbie. Not guilty, I’m prepared to believe.’ She placed a case file on the desk in front of me. Typed on the white label was HMA -v- Robbie Munro. ‘I’ve emailed the procurator fiscal for disclosure,’ she said, opening the file and handing me a pen. ‘I’ve typed up the form 8.1-A. Who am I putting down as your legal representative? And please don’t say Sammy Veitch. He was in here on Friday, having me make him cups of coffee and looking at your office like he was planning on moving in.’
‘Put his name down and have him sign the form when he comes in,’ I said. ‘It’ll be okay for just now.’
‘And I’ve booked Miss Faye for the trial. Actually, she booked herself. She called last week when you were . . . otherwise engaged. She said you were to call her for a consultation when you were ready.’
Fiona Faye QC was my go-to gal when it came to High Court work. Since I was now on bail, the Crown had around ten months to serve an indictment. They usually tried to work to a timescale of seven months, and, it being June, I wasn’t expecting much to happen until the new year. It would be months after that before the trial. It was nice of Fiona to show interest at this early stage. Most senior counsel let the solicitor do all the spadework and only sat up and took notice of the case a week or so before the trial kicked off.
‘Did she say anything about fees?’ I asked.
‘No, and I didn’t bother to ask. You’ve sent her a lot of work over the years.’
I had, but most of it had been legal aid. I wasn’t sure if that would be enough for Fiona to take on my case pro bono. Still, there was plenty of time before I’d need to involve her, and money spent on a successful defence wouldn’t be wasted.
Grace Mary left the room. I picked up the case file and looked again at my name on the front cover. It was surreal. I’d been involved in a number of murder cases over the years, but I’d never thought I’d ever be preparing my own defence. One advantage I did have over all the others was that this time I knew for certain the accused was innocent. I also had another: I knew who the real culprit was. Why had I been so stupid as to ask for Stan Blandy’s help? He might say he was now totally legit, but there was legit and there was what Stan Blandy called legit. Even though it had been me who had involved Stan, I wasn’t going to start blaming myself for MacDonald’s death. How was I to know Stan would put his personal rottweiler onto the case of locating Joanna’s molester? I should have insisted that Grace Mary track him down. After all, I’d only wanted a note of his whereabouts, not an execution. Remember who your friends are. Well, I was remembering. I was remembering all the work I’d done for Stan’s “business colleagues” over the years, and thought I deserved more than just protection from some drug-smuggling nutter in prison. Why should that be enough to buy my silence, when I was looking at a life sentence? I needed to speak to him urgently.
My first problem would be finding Stan, for he was not a man who wanted to be found. His business thrived in a miasma of shell companies and proxy CEOs. I had absolutely no idea where he worked or where he lived, other than that it was to the west. Previously, whenever we’d done business, I’d never called him, he’d always called me. Even then we’d never spoken on the phone other than to arrange a meeting somewhere he could be sure we weren’t being seen or overheard.
‘What we need is a game plan,’ Sammy said, coming in and gently rousing me from my thoughts by slamming his battered old briefcase onto my desk. ‘And d’you know what? I think I’ve got one.’ He pulled up the chair opposite, sat down and pointed a finger at me. ‘You say you never done it—’
‘Sammy, did you wink at me just then?’
‘And if you didn’t do it, we need to find some folk to say they saw you never doing it. I was thinking Brendan at the Red Corner might know some people. He owes you one for that licensing board thing you got him a result for. He’s bound to know some boys who can back you up. Boys who know the score. Of course, you might need to . . .’ He rubbed his thumb and index finger together. ‘But it’ll be worth it in the long run. Just tell me the time when this MacDonald guy was bumped off and we’ll have you put miles away and surrounded by friends.’
I leaned back in my chair, studied the ceiling for a few moments and then stood up and looked down at my lawyer. ‘Sammy, this is not a dodgy personal injury claim. You’re making it sound like I’ve broken a leg and you want me to find a suitable upraised paving slab so that I can say I tripped over it. I’m charged with murder and I don’t intend to gamble the rest of my life on the testimony of some Red Corner Bar regulars with records longer than The Beatles’ back catalogue. Try and get it through your head. I didn’t do it. I’m innocent. I don’t need some half-baked alibi defence. I need to find the truth. Or, if not, something very like it.’
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.’ I had been vaguely aware of a shadow hovering outside the door to my office and had assumed it was Grace Mary eavesdropping. It wasn’t. It was Joanna.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘You know I’m on bail with a condition not to contact you. If they catch you with me, I’ll end up doing a hundred and forty days on remand.’
Joanna pushed me out of the way, took Sammy’s briefcase, handed it to him and replaced the briefcase with her handbag. ‘I’d like to speak to my husband alone, please.’
Sammy stood up, chin raised, ginger beard thrust forward. ‘I’m your husband’s lawyer and—’
‘You’re not,’ Joanna said. ‘Not any more.’
Both myself and Sammy were about to protest at the same time, until Joanna showed us each the palm of a hand. ‘Sammy, thanks for your help to date, but it’s time for you to take a back seat, and Robbie, yes, I am aware of the bail conditions. You’re not to contact me or otherwise attempt to communicate with me or enter our home address. What you may have forgotten is that you’re not to do any of those things without reasonable excuse. Well, now you’ve got a reasonable excuse. I’ve resigned from the Procurator Fiscal’s Office and you’ve now appointed me as your solicitor. What’s a more reasonable excuse than an accused person communicating with his lawyer?’
I looked at Sammy, Sammy looked at me. ‘This is a mistake,’ he said. ‘You’re too close to this, Joanna. You can’t think objectively. I’ve been a lawyer longer than the pair of you put together. I know what I’m doing. Leave it to me. I’ll sort it.’
Joanna was of a different mind. ‘No disrespect, Sammy, but you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a civil lawyer and this is a criminal case. The most serious criminal case you can get. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just trust myself more. Now, any questions?’ Joanna asked in a manner that suggested she wasn’t expecting any. ‘Good.’ She turned to Sammy. ‘Tell Grace Mary to draft up a bail review application setting out my change in circumstances and asking for a hearing as soon as possible.’
‘Tell her yourself,’ Sammy said, after receiving an are-you-still-here? look from my wife. ‘I’m not the office boy,’ and with that, one kilted lawyer left the room, closing the door firmly behind him.
‘That was a bit harsh, Jo,’ I said. ‘Sammy was only trying to help.’
‘We don’t need his kind of help,’ she replied. ‘I don’t trust him to keep his mouth shut. A few drinks and every pub in the town would know what crazy defence he’d thought up. He’s a distraction and better out of the way.’
‘I do have one question,’ I said, feeling like I should be putting my hand up and asking permission. ‘What if the cops see us together? The reasonable excuse is a great defence to a section 27(1)(b) charge, but I don’t fancy spending time on remand waiting for the trial so you can present it.’
Joanna came around the desk and hugged me. ‘Don’t worry.’ She ran her hand over my hair. ‘There’s nobody at the Fiscal’s office going to mark a prosecution against you for breach of bail. I’ve made sure of that.’ She kissed me and stepped away. ‘But you’re right. If some over-eager cop sees us together before the bail condition is formally lifted, you could end up in the cells for an overnighter, and I’m not having you spend any more time behind bars.’ She picked up her handbag and kissed me again. ‘You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, but it can wait a few days. After that I want to hear the truth. That’s the whole truth, Robbie,’ she said, emphasising her remarks with a poke to my chest. ‘Not just something like the truth.’
19
‘Are you and Mum not talking to each other?’ I was at my dad’s kitchen table supervising Tina’s homework, which as usual had been left until five minutes before bedtime. My daughter’s teacher, Miss Closs, was very big on homework. Tina never came home without some. Occasionally there would be projects to do: on history, nature or far-flung corners of the globe. Each came with a strict deadline attached. A deadline that Tina was extremely poor at detaching and communicating to her parents, with the result that Joanna and I had spent many a long evening printing stuff off the Internet while our little project-writer slept on, waking in the morning to find a jotter stuffed full of pictures of Robert the Bruce, the fish of UK coastal waters or the Panama Canal. Still, Miss Closs’s pupils always seemed to do best. She was only in her early thirties, but her name combined with platinum blonde hair, round rimless specs and a figure that was more love handles than Love Island, had led the kids to nickname her Santa. Some parents said it was because she delivered. Personally, I thought it was because the parents did all the work while she took the credit.
Unfortunately, Tina had inherited her father’s indecipherable handwriting. Today Miss Closs had sent her home with some sheets of words, the letters printed in dots that Tina was supposed to trace around. My daughter held up for my inspection the first attempt, which had taken her all of twenty seconds to complete. On this sheet the words were to do with climate change, and, so far as I could see, any direct hits on the dotted letters had been about as accurate as an internet weather forecast.
‘Yes, we’re talking. I was talking to Mum today at work,’ I said, flipping to the next page, all to do with fruit, and pushing it under her nose. ‘Now why don’t you try again, and take your time with it?’
‘Is it because of that man you killed?’ Tina asked, picking up her pencil and gripping it like it might try and escape.
I ruffled her hair, which didn’t make her writing any neater. ‘What are you talking about?’ I laughed. ‘I haven’t killed anyone.’
‘Then why isn’t Mum here and why are we staying at Gramps’s?’
‘Because . . .’ I said, pulling her towards me and whispering in her ear, ‘he gets lonely sometimes and he likes it when people come to stay with him.’
Unconvinced, she pulled away and continued to plough the page with a blunt HB. ‘Why’s he going away out tonight if he likes it when people come to stay with him, then?’ Bad handwriting never made for a bad cross-examiner.
My dad came into the kitchen to say cheerio, kissed the top of Tina’s head and left.
‘Was it a bad man you killed?’ Tina asked, after he’d gone. ‘My teacher says there are bad men who try and steal wee girls and you should never talk to them or take their sweeties. Was it one of them? Was it a pedalo? If it was then I suppose it was okay to kill them. Unless it was Uncle Malky. He always gives me sweets and . . .’ Tina stopped, pencil poised over a dotted banana, and looked up at me. ‘Does Uncle Malky steal wee girls?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s the big girls Uncle Malky has difficulty keeping his hands off. You wee girls have nothing to worry about. And who told you this nonsense about me killing someone?’
‘Natasha.’
I thought it might have been. Natasha. Seven-and-a-half years old and already with the face of someone who’d stick a knife in your football if you kicked it over her fence.
‘She said her dad read it in the newspaper and he was laughing about it.’
‘That’s because it’s all a big joke,’ I said.
‘But it’s not funny.’
‘I know. It’s hard to explain. You’ll understand why it’s a joke when you’re older and we’ll all laugh about it then. Okay?’
Bouncer scratched at the back door to get in, which was an excellent excuse to break off the conversation. I waited until I thought Tina should have finished and returned to the table to find out she was now colouring in the illustration of a bowl of fruit at the foot of the page. Using all the dexterity of her attempts at neat handwriting, she’d managed to mark the tabletop liberally with felt pen. I took a cloth from the draining board and looked under the sink for some cleaning solution. There was a bottle of Cif behind the bottle of Ardbeg we’d drunk from the previous Thursday. The level of the whisky hadn’t changed. I’d say one thing for my dad: he never touched a drop when he was watching the kids. But I’d have to speak to him about moving the stuff under the sink to a higher cupboard out of Jamie’s reach. I was moving the green whisky bottle out of the way, when I thought about another type of green bottle. Not a bottle full of fine Islay malt, but a tonic wine bottle, smashed and with jagged edges.
Tina was long in bed when my dad returned from the Red Corner Bar’s Monday night domino competition, clutching six cans of McEwan’s export. ‘Silver medal again?’ I said. ‘Who won the speedboat?’
‘It was a steak pie and who else but Sammy Veitch? I swear the man can see through walls. I stopped wearing my specs when I played with him, because I used to think he was reading my hand from the reflection. Now I just think he has X-ray vision. Hope he’s as good at finding you a defence as he is at finding the double-six every shuffle.’
‘Did he say anything about me?’ I asked, hoping Sammy, a few drinks under his sporran, hadn’t been holding forth on my case to the clientele of the Red Corner Bar.
‘Not much. He did say he’d been sacked. I hope you know what you’re doing. I mean, I’m sure Joanna’s a fine lawyer and all that, but she’s . . . Well, she’s . . .’
‘My wife?’
‘No, not just that. She’s . . . Och, you know.’
Someone who didn’t know my dad might have formed the impression he was referring to Joanna’s sex, and that like some of my criminal clients, who didn’t want a burd representing them in court, he thought Joanna wasn’t up to the task. Anyone who did know him, would be aware that nothing could be further from the truth. My dad didn’t believe in equal rights for women. Why should they lower themselves to our standards? For my dad, the battle of the sexes had been lost a long time ago. Old-fashioned male manners and chivalry were not patriarchal, but an attempt by men to retain some vestiges of pride. No, what the old man was referring to was what he considered to be Joanna’s one weak point when it came to criminal law.
‘You mean she’s honest?’ I said.
‘It’s not that.’ He screwed up his face. ‘Well, it is that. This is the justice system. Sometimes you need to give it a bit of a hand. The truth is all very well, but—’
‘Not the whole truth?’
‘All I’m saying is that Sammy was reminding me how we were all watching the football down at the Red Corner bar, the night it happened. You, me, Sammy, Brendan. I haven’t spoken to Malky yet—’
‘And what about the CCTV cameras?’ I asked. ‘The ones that cover the High Street and won’t show me either entering or leaving the pub.’
‘Ach, it was just one idea. Sammy’s full of them. I don’t know if he was trying to help or just making a point. He’s not happy about being sacked.’
‘I know that, Dad. And I am grateful for what he’s done. But if Sammy’s best idea is an alibi that will burst like a fat man’s breeks at a buffet, then it’s no good to me.’
Without another word the old man headed through to the kitchen to put the cans of beer in the fridge. After that I saw him bending over at the sink. ‘And don’t bother touching that bottle of Ardbeg,’ I said. ‘You’ll have had enough to drink tonight and I’ve got to go out and see someone.’
‘At this time? Who? You’re not going home, are you? It just takes one person to drive past and see your car parked outside and they’ll lift the phone to the police. A man’s got his needs but wait until this bail thing’s been lifted. You said it would only be a few more days.’
‘It’s okay, Dad,’ I said, closing the cupboard door and handing him the kettle. ‘I’m not going to see Joanna. I’m paying a visit to another woman. Don’t wait up.’
20
The other woman was Meeko. She’d mugged Stan Blandy’s ‘business acquaintance’s’ son, and taken his mobile. There’d be a contact number on that phone, if not for Stan then certainly for this new woman in his life. All I needed to do was track down Meeko, get the phone and set up a meeting with the big man. What I would say to him at that meeting was something I hadn’t quite thought through yet, but would be along the lines of, You got me into this, now get me out.
On a Monday night, the streets of Linlithgow were quiet. I drove out of the town centre and eventually found Meeko’s door. There was no answer and no neighbours around who might be able to shed light on her whereabouts. Next stop was the corner shop she was known to frequent: an outlet for alcohol where age was regarded as a social construct and nothing to do with what was on your actual birth certificate.
‘Meeko’s barred.’ The proprietor was quite adamant about that. ‘She’s not getting back in until she starts paying for the stuff she takes.’ It seemed a not unreasonable position for a shopkeeper to take.
His wife, dressed in brightly patterned salwar kameez, was sitting on a stool in a corner behind the counter, watching a portable TV. ‘Last time she stole from us we called the polis and the next night our big window got broken,’ she called over her shoulder, eyes fixed to the screen. ‘What are you wanting her for? Is she in trouble again? Good. Maybe if you got her locked up, we’d get some peace around here.’
