Bad Debt, page 15
Strangely enough I did believe him. Stan was no liar. He could afford not to lie because no one was ever going to challenge him, whatever the truth. There were people like that. Untouchable people who were always right, even when they were wrong. In the legal world we called them judges.
As soon as the nappy was off, Jamie commenced his impersonation of an untethered firehose. Tina shrieked with laughter and threw her mum the terry-towelling nappy, kept for such emergencies. When Jamie was born, we’d bought a bundle of them for the sake of the environment. We’d saved the planet for nearly a week before moving on to disposables.
‘Why would you believe someone like that?’ Joanna said, throwing the towelling nappy over the offending member like she was putting out a chip pan fire.
I asked Tina to go and fetch Jamie’s PJs. She screwed up her face. ‘Go on, I’ll time you,’ I said. ‘See if you can do it in less than ten seconds. One, two . . .’ and off she went. I wondered how much longer she’d fall for the old I’ll-time-you routine. ‘I believe him because if he’d had MacDonald killed, he’d have told me. What’s it to him? He knows I’d never incriminate him. Even if I did, and I told the truth, imagine how well that would go under cross-examination? So, Mr Munro, you asked a person you say is a criminal client of yours, to track down the man who was stalking your wife, because you just wanted a little chat? And that was before you and a couple of his henchmen took Mr MacDonald to a secluded spot and interrogated him with use of a pickaxe handle?’
Joanna shrugged. ‘Are you saying it was just coincidence that he was in town the very same night MacDonald put the squeeze on me to drop Keggie’s case? And just a coincidence that he could track MacDonald down for you so easily, just using a number plate?’
‘Coincidences happen all the time,’ I said. ‘It’s only the cops and prosecutors who don’t believe such things exist. The man we’re talking about has ways and means to do lots of things. He also has other people to put on the squeeze, and, trust me, if they’d squeezed you, you’d stay squeezed, not get away by kicking some shins. And, anyway, how would he know to threaten you? You’d only just been given the case.’
Joanna handed me the baby wipes. ‘I keep coming back to Josh Wedderburn. One minute he’s too sick to prosecute Simon Keggie’s trial, the next he’s giving it the Lonesome Cowboy Blues at the Star & Garter Hotel.’
Tina crashed into the room and threw a little yellow all-in-one at me. ‘Nine . . . ten,’ I said, loudly. ‘Well done, ten seconds. You’re getting really quick. Now why don’t you go and start running the bath for Jamie? I’ll bet you can do that really fast – one . . .!’
‘I think Wedderburn tried to have the case time-barred,’ Joanna continued, after Tina had departed at speed. ‘First of all, there was a huge delay before the indictment was served, then there were two spurious motions by the Crown for adjournments. After that he called the trial in on the last possible day, when he just happened to come down with an extremely short-term illness, and the witness who never turned up was Angus MacDonald. That trial was never starting on time. When Wedderburn heard I was taking over the case, he could have contacted MacDonald and told him not to cooperate.’
It was a theory I could warm to. There was just one problem with it. ‘If the plan was to have Keggie acquitted, it worked. Why would someone want to kill MacDonald afterwards?’
Faced with that dead end, I took Jamie through to the bathroom where Tina was playing with a temperature float shaped like a boat, sailing it through a sea of steam and bubbles. The reading was 46 degrees.
Joanna followed me into the bathroom. ‘Maybe I am wrong,’ she said, ‘and if I am, you’ll need to find someone who had a better motive than you for killing him.’
‘Which is why I was thinking of putting Sammy Veitch onto the case,’ I said, adding cold water. When the correct temperature was reached, I lowered my son into the water. ‘If he’s as good at chasing down leads as he is at chasing ambulances, it’s got to be worth a try.’
‘How much would we be paying him?’ Joanna asked.
‘As little as possible. He hasn’t paid me for the Simon Keggie trial yet, so we could work something out later.’
When wee Jamie was bathed, filled with milk and in his night attire, I carried him through to our room and laid him in his cot. According to my dad, when it came to the job of being a baby, Jamie was just like my brother Malky had been. Give him something to drink, let him have a good burp and he’d sleep all night. Some things never changed.
Next morning, I braved court for the first time since I’d been in the dock. Some fellow solicitors welcomed me back, others stayed well away. Jeff Freeman, ex-porn film director, met me outside Courtroom 2 where his intermediate diet was about to call. He was looking worried and wanted to know ‘the plan’. I find it best, if you do have a plan, not to tell the client about it. That way they don’t go blabbing and have it filter back to the prosecution.
The prosecution was represented that morning by the subject of my discussion the night before, Josh Wedderburn. I hadn’t seen him since his sick-boy routine at Simon Keggie’s trial. He had a little plan of his own.
‘How are you, Robbie?’ he asked. ‘You’ll have a lot on your plate just now, and I was thinking, this Freeman business. It all boils down to whether the video footage is indecent or not. If your client’s still determined to go to trial, how about we agree the routine police evidence of the search, et cetera, by way of a joint minute of admissions? Then it’ll just be a case of the sheriff watching the video and coming back with a verdict. That way we can shorten the trial and save you a lot of hassle that you don’t need right now.’ Wedderburn was a relatively new depute and had not quite mastered the art of fake sincerity. I, on the other hand, had had years of practice.
‘Thanks, Josh,’ I said. ‘How about we just knock the case on, and you can bring the joint minute along to the trial?’
His attempt at a sympathetic smile needed work. ‘No problem, Robbie,’ he said. ‘Anything to help.’
At lunchtime I found myself in the café on the ground floor of the Civic Centre, eating cheese and onion toasties with good friend and fellow solicitor, Paul Sharp. It didn’t take long to get around to the subject most on my mind. I’d already explained to Paul that Joanna would be acting in my defence, and, because I knew that whatever I told him would be kept in strict confidence, had filled him in on what I understood to be the Crown case, minus mention of the pickaxe handle.
‘Seems reasonably thin to me,’ he said. ‘Have you consulted with Fiona Faye yet? I’m assuming that’s who you’ve instructed.’
‘It is, but I’ve a few things to sort out before we consult,’ I said, moving my mouth around some molten cheddar. ‘I wouldn’t want to waste her time until I’ve seen everything the Crown is going to throw at me.’
‘Well let me know if there’s anything I can help you with,’ Paul said, starting in about his toastie, burning his lip in the process.
‘A defence would be good if you’ve got one handy,’ I said.
Paul didn’t say anything. Just looked at me, food poised warily at his mouth.
‘You believe I’m innocent, don’t you?’ I said.
‘We can all do stupid things in the heat of the moment,’ he replied, once he’d tentatively bitten another corner off his toastie.
‘Paul, I didn’t do anything stupid. At least not so stupid that I killed someone.’
‘Then why is there a case against you at all? Why would the Crown go off half-cocked with a prosecution against a solicitor, if it only had the bare threads of a circumstantial case? Are you sure you’re not keeping anything back?’
At the top of the stairs leading from the court complex, I noticed Hugh Ogilvie looking down at us. I jerked my head up at him, and said to Paul, ‘Loose lips . . . It’s probably better if we don’t talk about my case any more. You know what he’s like. You’re not my solicitor and if he thinks we’re talking about it, he’ll have you hauled in for questioning in case I’ve blurted out a confession.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Paul laughed. ‘Other than because he hates you, I mean.’
Ogilvie began his descent.
‘Let’s talk about football or something,’ I said, and as Ogilvie walked across the lobby towards us, we both tried our best to avoid eye contact by digging into our toasties. He walked to the counter carrying his own reusable bamboo drinking vessel and ordered himself a coffee to go. Cup in hand, he strolled in our direction once more, this time stopping when he reached our table.
‘Everything all right, gentlemen?’ Paul stuffed the rest of his food in his mouth and got to his feet mumbling something about having to see a client in custody. Ogilvie remained standing, looking down at me. ‘Congratulations on the Keggie case,’ he said, like he had a pain in his side.
Hugh Ogilvie was the procurator fiscal for Livingston. Political allegiance on his part had always been more for career furtherance than any point of principle, which was why he was currently a nationalist. Simon Keggie was a Tory councillor, and to hang a political scalp like that on his belt would not have harmed the ambitions of a procurator fiscal seeking elevation to the bench, one little bit.
‘You’ve got a dog, haven’t you, Robbie?’ he said, lifting the lid off his coffee and sniffing it. ‘Me too. Sometimes I take mine for a walk in Kirkton Park of a Friday evening – if the weather’s nice.’ He lifted his head to look past me across the stone-floored atrium to the sun spilling in through the glass frontage of the Civic Centre. ‘I usually go around seven o’clock.’ Then, taking a sip of coffee, he continued on his way.
28
There are plenty of places to walk a dog near to where I live, but at seven o’clock that evening I was eight miles from home, over the Bathgate Hills, and walking through the stone archway into Kirkton Park. Ogilvie, a boy about Tina’s age and an excitable little spaniel were loitering by the wooden totem pole that served as a signpost. Leading the way towards them, Tina was towed along by Bouncer, happy at being somewhere new.
When Ogilvie saw us coming, he started to walk along the path near to the tennis courts, and we followed. When we came to a children’s play area, Tina handed me Bouncer’s lead and she and Ogilvie’s boy were off like a shot.
I walked over to where Ogilvie was standing and stood by his side while our dogs got better acquainted in the way that dogs do. Bouncer was on a short leash. He was a friendly enough dog but could get overly excited and didn’t always play well with others. I’d rescued him as a puppy from the not-so-tender care of Jake Turpie, full-time scrap dealer and psychopath. Bouncer had settled in with us well, but you can take the junkyard mutt out of the junkyard . . . For instance, right now I wasn’t quite sure if he was licking Ogilvie’s spaniel or tasting it.
‘There’s something funny going on,’ Ogilvie said, out of the corner of his mouth, staring straight ahead, like this was Gorky Park and not Kirkton Park.
‘Not from where I’m standing, slap-bang in the middle of a murder charge, there isn’t,’ I replied.
‘What do you know about Simon Keggie?’ he asked. ‘I mean really know.’
I didn’t pay a lot of interest to local government, not until my Council Tax Bill came in every year – and then I tended to do a lot of shouting. All I really knew about Keggie was that he was a popular politician, not easy if you’re a Tory in West Lothian, who’d risen through the ranks to become Provost, whatever that entailed. I also knew that he’d assaulted the man who’d broken into his house, had injured him badly in self-defence and then been acquitted due to a lack of evidence, or, as I preferred to see it, my own courtroom brilliance.
‘There was no lack of evidence,’ Ogilvie said.
‘It was all down to my courtroom brilliance then?’
The PF didn’t see it that way. ‘There was more than enough evidence if MacDonald hadn’t gone back on his police statement and if you hadn’t pulled some spurious motion about self-incrimination. Then again, from my years of experience dealing with you, spurious motions are your raison d’être.’
I turned to face him. ‘Why are we here?’ I asked. ‘Apart, obviously, from letting our kids play on the swings and our dogs sniff each other’s backsides?’
‘We’re here because I think Keggie had something to do with the murder of Angus MacDonald,’ he said bluntly.
I said nothing, not taken in by the idea that Ogilvie might be trying to help me in some way. This was the man, the procurator fiscal, who throughout my career in his jurisdiction had been the fragment of eggshell in my egg salad sandwich, and, lest we forget, the man who’d put me on a murder petition in the first place. Not only that but he’d opposed bail. For all I knew, this meeting was a catch-and-kill attempt to find out my line of defence and abort it.
‘Come on. You must have been thinking the same thing,’ he said. ‘While your past history would suggest you’ll try to cobble together some cunning defence, I’d guess your final position has to be that you had nothing to do with MacDonald’s death, and if that’s correct, then somebody else must be responsible.’
‘Hugh, why are we here?’ I said, not sure if he expected me to marvel at his firm grasp on the bleeding obvious. ‘You’re the procurator fiscal who put me on a murder petition.’
‘You’re a solicitor, Robbie. I couldn’t charge you with shoplifting without asking for Crown Office approval.’ I’d always wondered why that was. Probably, to spread the enjoyment around Castle Grayskull that a defence lawyer was in the frame. ‘The cops submitted a report in which you were the prime suspect. I didn’t think it was enough to go on, but I couldn’t ignore such a serious matter, which was why I sent it through to Edinburgh. I was surprised as you were – okay, maybe not quite so surprised – when word came back to prosecute and oppose bail.’
I took a step back, almost tripping over Bouncer. ‘Are you trying to say that you think I’m innocent, Hugh?’
Ogilvie winced. ‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that. I think you know something about it, unless your phone took itself out for a drive that night. But kill this man MacDonald? Why would you? Because he’d been pestering your wife? I know Joanna. She can handle herself very well without your help. No, think about it,’ he said, as though perhaps my mind had been on other things since my arrest and during a week on remand. ‘Who had previously assaulted and almost killed MacDonald?’
‘Keggie? The motive for that was MacDonald breaking into his house at midnight,’ I said.
Ogilvie’s dog was on an extension lead and had gone off on a wander by itself to a nearby tree. He began to reel it in, but the dog squatted, and he stopped, reached into his pocket and brought out a purple disposable bag. Once he’d returned with a neatly parcelled package, he said, ‘Would you stop thinking like Keggie’s lawyer for two minutes? What housebreaking? There was not a scrap of evidence that MacDonald broke in. Do you think Keggie was actually in the habit of leaving his doors unlocked at night? Don’t give me that. And let’s not forget MacDonald’s original statement to the police. The one you somehow managed to keep from the jury. In it he said he’d been invited to MacDonald’s place.’
‘As much as I’d like to believe there was something in that, I think housebreaking is the more likely scenario,’ I said.
Ogilvie shook his head. ‘I should have done the trial myself,’ he muttered. ‘I’d have found out why MacDonald was really there.’
He was talking nonsense. My wife was twice the trial lawyer Ogilvie could ever hope to be. ‘I’m not sure the outcome would have been very different,’ I said, in a diplomatic tone I seldom used when conversing with the PF. ‘Joanna did her best. What chance did she have when the complainer wouldn’t speak up?’
‘That’s not what I meant. Josh Wedderburn practically begged me for that case. I let him have it, and he proceeded to drag it out for a year. Two Crown adjournments because he said he wanted to nail down the medical and forensic evidence, then he doesn’t call the trial in until the last day before the case time-barred, and promptly takes unwell. You saw how hard it was for me to get an extension. Even though Josh told me he’d be okay by Tuesday, I don’t know why, but I had a feeling he’d come up with some other excuse. That’s why I got onto Joanna straightaway, and I can tell you Josh wasn’t very happy about it.’
I had presumed that any trial-dodging by Josh Wedderburn had been due to laziness, not wanting to take on what wasn’t a particularly good Crown case. Now it seemed that both Ogilvie and Joanna were of the same mind, namely that Wedderburn had been trying to fabricate a way of having the case time-barred. What good that did me was less clear. Ogilvie had a theory which I had to admit showed a degree of imagination on his part.
‘I don’t believe there was any housebreaking. I believe MacDonald’s original statement that he had been invited to Keggie’s home.’
‘Yeah, but a housebreaker would say that.’
Ogilvie tapped his temple. ‘Assume for a moment he didn’t break in. If he was invited, he was obviously there for a reason.’
‘And what was that?’ I said.
‘That’s what I’d like to find out.’ Ogilvie bent down and patted his dog. Fed up with Bouncer’s attentions, it was now sitting at its master’s feet. ‘I’m telling you, something very fishy was taking place that night and it led to that assault. Whatever business it was they were discussing, it was something neither of them wanted the world to know about.’
‘MacDonald’s a big, powerful man,’ I said. ‘Keggie’s no weakling, but he’s old and out of shape. I’d still fancy MacDonald in a square go even if Keggie had a heavy walking stick.’
Ogilvie shook his head. ‘That was no fight. You’ve seen the medical evidence and the photographs. The injury was to the back of the head. Keggie kept the walking stick in an umbrella stand by the door. MacDonald was leaving. That’s when he was struck. The first blow would have floored him. He must have only just managed to scramble his way out onto the street. It saved him from further attack. I think Keggie had lost it and was trying to kill him.’
