Bad Debt, page 26
He pulled away from me, removed the three darts that were stuck in the dartboard and walked to the three-foot strip of wooden beading nailed to the floor that served as the oche. It was a tripping hazard over which many a pint had been spilt. ‘I remember you sacking me,’ he said, going for the treble twenty and hitting the five.
‘You weren’t sacked, Sammy. You’re still part of the team. It’s just that Joanna’s taken the lead. You said it yourself, you’ve done no criminal court work for ages. Joanna’s been a defence lawyer and a PF. She practically lives in court.’
He didn’t reply. His next throw was more accurate, and he hit a single twenty.
‘I’m meeting the cops from the Specialist Crime Division at MacDonald’s place to hand over the real murderer. He’s a guy called William Hendry. My dad hit him over the head—’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me,’ Sammy said, embedding an arrow firmly into the treble one.
When he went to collect the darts, I blocked his path and pulled them from the board before he could get to them. ‘If anyone has got a brass neck, it’s you,’ I said. ‘You owe me. If you hadn’t begged me to take on Keggie’s trial, I wouldn’t be in the mess I am. You and Eddie with your plan to time-bar the case. Landing me right in it.’
‘It wasn’t my plan, it was Eddie’s,’ Sammy hit back. ‘And if you’re going to see the cops, what do you want me for? You always say it’s best to tell the cops no comment.’
Which was true enough, except, on this occasion, I was going to tell them everything and let them bring down Harvey Rudd in order to set me free.
‘I want a witness to me giving them Hendry,’ I said. ‘Joanna thinks it’s wise in case something goes wrong later. And I’ve other evidence to hand over too.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A video clip on a memory stick that . . . Why am I telling you this if you’re not going to help?’
He shrugged, and, without another word, showed me his back and sauntered over to the bar.
‘It’s good to know who your friends are,’ I said, chucking all three darts at the board and nearly hitting it. ‘Are you coming with me or not?’
Brendan lifted the mug from the counter. ‘You want me to give this a blast for you in the micro?’ he asked Sammy.
The wee man shook his head. ‘No more caffeine for me,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough excitement for one day.’
‘Anything I can do, Robbie?’ Brendan asked after Sammy had gone. ‘If you need some backup, I can spare Mickey, things are not so busy now.’
Mickey the barman seemed willing enough and had been to court more than most lawyers. Unfortunately, I needed someone credible and reliable in case I ever had to call them as a witness. A jury would take one look at Mickey’s schedule of previous convictions and feel sorry for the tree they’d cut down to print it.
It was nine o’clock. I was meeting Sandeman and Dicker at ten. I looked into the mirror behind the bar and a tired face stared back at me. I’d been running on adrenaline all day and it was fast running out. I stayed to drink Sammy’s coffee and to bemoan the fact that I’d been let down by the two people who owed me the biggest debt. The two people who’d landed me in the predicament I now found myself. Who needed enemies when you had friends like that?
51
I could see a light on in Angus MacDonald’s cottage when I drove up the bumpy track later than intended. DCI Sandeman was standing outside the front door, leaning against the wall, one foot resting on an ancient, cast iron boot-scraper. The rain was falling more steadily now, and she was sheltered by the overhang of the roof. When she saw me alight, she took a final drag on her cigarette, and pinged the stub into the courtyard.
‘Have you got it?’ she asked.
I held up Jeff Freeman’s laptop, the green fluorescent memory stick protruding from the side. Sandeman smiled, opened the front door and made to usher me through. I hesitated. This was the house where Angus MacDonald had been killed. My DNA might be in the outbuilding, but not in the house itself.
‘It’s okay. Scene of Crime have been and done their thing,’ Sandeman assured me. ‘The cleaners will be coming in to give the place a scrub out later this week.’
I still wasn’t sure.
Sandeman looked up at a darkening sky and turned the palms of her hands upwards to catch raindrops. ‘Go in. You’ll get soaked out here,’ she said. And I allowed her to steer me through the front door and into what was a large kitchen for such a small house, the thick stone walls of which had kept the place cool, like a morgue. I looked around and saw dark stains outlined in marker pen on the linoleum floor: reminders that Angus MacDonald had been killed here. Struck over the head, possibly tortured and then shot twice in the chest. Individual splashes on the walls, on a large dresser and on the legs of some chairs were also circled. Swabs would have been taken and the blood identified as being that of the man Simon Keggie had been charged with assaulting. The trial seemed like an age ago.
Dicker was sitting at the table with his back to me. When he heard me come in, he raised his immense bulk from the chair. Before I could stop him, he’d walked over and pulled the memory stick from the laptop. ‘This it?’ I put the laptop on the table. ‘Have you watched it?’ he asked.
‘It’s not one for an animal lover,’ I replied.
Sandeman hadn’t moved from the door and was still holding it open. ‘Anyone else seen it?’
‘Does it matter?’ I said. Very soon everyone would be seeing it.
‘It matters,’ Sandeman said, and, with that, walked out again.
I looked over my shoulder to see the door closing behind her. Where was she going?
When I turned to face Dicker again, the green memory stick had gone from one hand to another and been replaced by something square and black. He pointed it at me. I wasn’t an expert in firearms but I knew a standard police-issue Glock 17 when I saw one – and this wasn’t one of those. It was something older, a revolver with chips in the paintwork. Joanna had told me not to trust them, and as proof of that I now had a gun in my face.
‘Who else has seen it?’ His voice seemed to come at me from a distance. How could I have been so stupid as to trust them? Me of all people. I knew the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency were a law unto themselves, and for all intents and purposes the Scottish Parliament’s secret police force. Why had I thought their successors would be any different? Of course they’d be investigating a scandal involving the Justice Secretary. But not expose it: to cover it up.
‘Just me,’ I said, eventually.
‘Yeah?’ Dicker said, sarcastically. ‘Who else have you shown it to?’
‘No one. I watched it on this laptop right before I arranged to meet you. It’s not even my laptop. The video is in a special format. I didn’t know how to view it. The person who showed me how, didn’t see it.’
The fat cop grunted. ‘How many copies did you make?’
‘None. There’s just the one,’ I said, still dazed.
He cocked the revolver. ‘How many?’
I set the laptop down on the table. ‘The one on the stick and I had one emailed to me.’
‘From where?’
‘From this laptop to mine.’
‘Where’s yours?’
I’d left it in Joanna’s car.
‘In my office somewhere,’ I said.
‘Sit.’ He pointed the gun from me to the laptop. ‘Delete what’s on that. Then delete the sent email, log onto your own email and delete it from there too. Make sure it’s gone.’
It’s funny how you run out of things to say when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun. I opened the lid, booted up the laptop and, when prompted, typed in the first five prime numbers that were Jeff Freeman’s security code. I picked up the memory stick and took my time trying to insert it into the USB slot. I needed to stall, time to think. If I showed the video clip to Dicker and deleted the emails, then what? MacDonald and Keggie had both been shot in order to silence them. But I was different. There was no need to kill me. What could I say that anyone would believe? If I came up with a story about the Justice Secretary killing a dog as my defence to the murder charge, the jury would think I was a comedy act.
Dicker drew out the chair next to mine and pushed it to the side, giving him space to stand next to me, staring down.
I pushed the memory stick in and then realised I didn’t know what to do after that. The usual Windows display appeared. How did I bring up the Linux operating system? Freeman had pressed one of the F buttons. I tried F1. Nothing. I tried F2. Still nothing. I was working my way up the Fs and had reached F7 when Dicker elbowed me in the side of the face. ‘Hurry up.’ He started to say something else when the door flew open and a dishevelled-looking William Hendry marched into the room, Sammy Veitch not far behind. Dicker shifted his fat frame and turned the gun on them. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I only knew that there was one gun in the room and that presented the biggest danger to me. I jumped out of the chair and hurled myself at Dicker, hitting him side on. It was like trying to rugby tackle a giant marshmallow – a twenty-stone marshmallow – and the force was barely enough to stagger him. As I clung on, he brought the handle of the gun down onto the top of my head. Sparks erupted behind my eyes. The pain was immense. Through it I managed to brace my legs and keep shoving. Dicker stepped backwards. Stumbling over the chair behind him, he put his arms out to steady himself. Letting go, I grabbed the arm holding the gun. There was a loud bang and a bullet embedded itself in the ceiling. Dicker wrenched his arm free. Before he could bring the gun to bear, Hendry was on him, slamming a fist into his face. The fat cop’s legs gave way. His glasses spun across the room. The handgun clattered to the floor and he slowly slumped to the ground beside it.
Sammy pushed his way past Hendry. ‘Are you okay, Robbie?’
I could barely hear him. Bees buzzed in my brain. A trickle of blood ran down the side of my head and into my ear.
‘What’s going on?’ I yelled at him.
‘Long story.’ He reached down for the gun. I intercepted him. ‘It’s okay, Robbie,’ he said. ‘We’re all on the same side here.’
‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘If that’s the gun used to kill MacDonald and Keggie, it’s got Dicker’s fingerprints all over it.’
Sammy backed away, righted the fallen chair and tried to push me into it. ‘Sit down ‘til you catch your breath. Everything’s okay.’
But I didn’t want to catch my breath. I wanted to know what was going on. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Calm down, Robbie. You might not like what I have to say.’ He retreated a few paces until he was level with Hendry. ‘This is Wullie. He’s Eddie Frew’s nephew. He’s . . . helped Eddie out before on a few wee jobs. Look, I really think you should sit down.’
‘No, I’m fine,’ I told him.
‘You might not be so fine in a minute or two,’ he said, and I sat.
‘It’s like this. Eddie was working both ends of the Simon Keggie case. He promised Keggie he’d get him off and promised Harvey Rudd there’d be no mention made of the blackmail video at the trial. He took big money from them both. All he needed to do was make sure the trial didn’t go ahead, and Rudd was in a position to make sure it didn’t.’
‘Through his fiancée, Jessica Barrett?’
‘I don’t know the details.’
‘But you knew what was going on?’ I said.
Sammy shrugged. ‘Me and Eddie . . . we were business partners, Robbie. I’m set to retire soon and . . . well, you’ve got to admit it was a good set-up. Eddie was quite pleased about the whole thing. After the trial I’m sure he would have been into Harvey Rudd for more money to make the video clip disappear. He was probably teeing that up when he had his heart attack in the Parliament bar.’
‘And when the time-bar plan didn’t work?’ I said.
‘I’ll admit I panicked a wee bit. I sent Wullie to have a word with your wife . . .’
Hendry stepped forward and put a hand against my chest to keep me in the chair.
‘There was no intention to harm her, Robbie. Wullie’s just not all that good with words and can be a tad scary at times.’
The fat man on the floor groaned and showed signs of regaining consciousness. Sammy hurried on with his explanation. ‘Last ditch, I sent Wullie up here that same Friday night to explain to MacDonald how he might have to give evidence after all, and what to say. Eddie had already given him money and no doubt told him there’d be more when he’d got Keggie off the hook and the Justice Secretary on it. He refused to cooperate. He wanted more money or he was going to court to tell everything. I told Wullie to tell him to stay home, let us sort out the trial and I’d square him up later.’
It had been Sammy’s idea to put Hendry in the witness box. I’d have been impressed if I hadn’t been so angry.
‘Wullie came up here on the night of the trial with money for him as arranged and to find out how much he wanted for the video clip. MacDonald was tied to one of these chairs. He’d been shot through the chest. There was a rucksack on the table.’ Sammy jerked his head at Dicker. ‘It was that guy, wasn’t it Wullie, who appeared from nowhere, yelling Polis at you?’ The big man confirmed with a nod. Sammy continued. ‘Wullie hit him and left, taking the rucksack. That’s when he bumped into your pals at the front door.’
There was more groaning from Dicker as he began to come round and started fumbling about for his glasses.
‘Keep an eye on him,’ Sammy said, and Hendry went over and put a foot on the fat cop’s chest.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before, Sammy?’
‘I didn’t know what you were up to. Who were those people who attacked Wullie? Were you in on it? I had to protect Wullie. I told him to keep a close eye on you.’
‘When I got lifted and you came to the police station? My dad never asked you to go, did he?’
Sammy grimaced his answer.
I turned to the big man. ‘Why did you attack me in the woods?’
But Sammy was doing the talking for him. ‘Wullie was following you. He saw you with the rucksack and thought whatever was in it would help him if he ended up getting the blame.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw something flit past the small window by the door.
‘What did you do with Sandeman?’ I asked.
‘Who?’ said Sammy.
‘The other cop who was outside keeping watch.’
Sammy’s face told me all I needed to know. I jumped to my feet, just as the door opened and the tall figure of DCI Sandeman walked in, a Glock 17 pointed at me.
‘Sit down,’ she said, and turned the gun on Sammy and Hendry who were standing over Dicker. ‘You two. Get away from him.’ She gestured with the gun. ‘Over there and down on your knees.’ They both obeyed, but only after she’d repeated the order. Slowly she edged her way to where Dicker was now sitting up, back against the wall. He’d located his glasses, but they were twisted and smashed beyond use. Sandeman kicked the revolver to him. ‘Keep those two covered.’ She came over to me. ‘Give me the USB.’
I pulled it out of the side of the laptop. She snatched it from me, dropped it on the floor and stamped on it, grinding it under the sole of a sturdy shoe. ‘There’s a copy on the laptop,’ Dicker said, dazed, but struggling to his feet. He joined his colleague, standing behind me, the revolver directed at Sammy and Hendry at the far end of the table.
‘Delete it,’ Sandeman said. I hesitated for a second. Sandeman put the gun to my head. ‘Now.’
I opened Jeff Freeman’s email, found the one addressed to me in the sent messages folder and deleted it.
‘He’s got one on his own email too,’ Dicker said to Sandeman.
‘Log on to your account and delete it,’ Sandeman said, jabbing the muzzle of the pistol into the side of my head by way of encouragement.
‘I need Wi-Fi,’ I said. ‘I don’t have the password for this place.’
Sandeman jabbed me again. Harder. ‘It’s an LTE laptop. It doesn’t need Wi-Fi. It’ll work over the mobile phone system.’ Trust Jeff to have the latest gear. ‘Get on with it,’ she said.
I brought up my own email account. While I was doing this, Dicker looked over at me, distracted by what I was doing.
Hendry, kneeling only a yard or so away from the fat cop, began rising slowly to his feet. Sandeman noticed and directed the gun at him. ‘Down!’ she yelled.
This was my chance. I had to make a move on Sandeman while the gun was aimed somewhere other than at my head, and hope Hendry would do likewise with Dicker. But the fat cop was wise to me. He sidestepped away from Sammy and Hendry, and, his gun steadily pointed at me, joined his partner. The two of them stood either side of me, a good twelve feet or so from the other two prisoners, giving them plenty of time to react if Hendry had any more ideas.
‘You keep your eye on them, I’ll keep my eye on what he’s doing,’ Sandeman barked at her colleague, ending her sentence with another jab to my head.
I clicked on my inbox and didn’t have to scroll far down to see the email from Jeff with the paperclip icon beside it. One glide of the cursor, one press of the delete button and the motive for Angus MacDonald’s murder disappeared into the ether.
I was about to close the laptop lid when a Skype box popped up asking if I would accept a video call from Robbie Munro. I clicked accept and onto the screen appeared the image of three people. Two of them were standing either side of my wife who was sitting at a desk, behind them a large bookcase. The one on Joanna’s right was Maggie Sinclair. The other was a man I didn’t instantly recognise. That was because I was used to seeing him dressed in red silk and with a horsehair wig on his head.
‘Robbie?’ Joanna said. ‘Is everything all right?’
Frozen for a moment, Sandeman slowly lowered the hand holding the gun. The pistol thudded off the floorboards. Dicker spun around; his revolver levelled at my temple. He looked at the startled face of his colleague, then down at me and, finally, squinting myopically at the screen, he looked into the horn-rimmed lenses on the face of Lord Bantaskine, just as the High Court judge leaned closer for a better look at the fat man holding a gun to my head.
