Sharp Practice (Best Defence series Book 3) Read online

  Sharp Practice

  Third in the Best Defence Series

  WHS McIntyre

  More in the Best Defence Series:

  #1 Relatively Guilty

  #2 Duty Man

  #4 Killer Contract

  #5 Crime Fiction

  #6 Last Will

  #7 Present Tense

  #8 Good News Bad News (out April 2017)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013

  William H.S. McIntyre

  All Rights Reserved

  www.bestdefence.biz

  A good criminal lawyer seeks after the truth.

  A great criminal lawyer makes sure the jury doesn’t hear it.

  ~ Robbie Munro ~

  Chapter 1

  ‘In there.’ The custody sergeant jerked his head in the direction of an interview room. ‘And don’t be long, there’s a queue.’

  Two thousand and twelve: Scotland no longer lagged behind such other bastions of human rights as Russia, Spain, Turkey, and, now that accused persons had the right to see a lawyer before interview, it made police stations much busier places of an evening; even a Friday evening.

  ‘When’s the interview happening?’ I asked.

  ‘Been there and done that,’ the sergeant replied. ‘He never wanted a lawyer. Your client is now officially huckled.’ He opened the door for me. ‘You’ve got ten minutes.’

  Ten minutes was fine by me; I had other plans for the evening. I walked into the room and saw my new client had already been brought from his cell and was there waiting to see me.

  Dr. Glen Beattie was young, gifted and hailed from the Black Isle. The latest addition to the local G.P surgery had arrived in our midst following the recent departure, feet first and in a box, of his predecessor: man of the people, hard-drinking, hard-smoking Dr Bill MacGregor, whose cold hands and warm heart had served the sick and ailing of Linlithgow for almost forty years.

  The only time I’d ever had cause to consult the late Dr MacGregor in my adult life, was several years before when worried about a suspected irregular heart-beat. Doc Mac had given me the benefit of a thirty second examination, asked me what beat I expected my heart to drum if I continued in a stressful job, drank gallons of black coffee and ate junk food. Following which sage advice, he lit up a smoke, showed me out and nipped next door to the Red Corner Bar for a swift half.

  With old Doc Mac buried along with his mistakes, I suspected that there were women of a certain age all over Linlithgow dreaming up ailments that required the immediate and intimate attention of his young, handsome replacement; however, that particular night, Dr Beattie’s sculpted features were pale and strained as he sat on a bolted-to-the-floor metal stool, shoulders hunched, elbows resting on an equally bolted-to-the-floor metal table. He brightened somewhat as I took a seat opposite and managed a strained smile. ‘Mr Munro?’

  ‘Dr Beattie, I don’t think we’ve ever actually met,’ I said as we shook hands.

  ‘Your father is a patient of mine. I’ve heard him speak of you.’

  ‘Dads; they love to boast about their children, don’t they?’

  What there was of a smile wilted. ‘Yes... well... anyway...’ Beattie cleared his throat. ‘He happened to mention that you were a criminal lawyer. I’m new to all this and yours was the only name I could remember. I’m afraid I don’t even know your first name.’

  ‘Robbie.’

  He pointed to himself, ‘Glen.’

  ‘Well, Glen,’ I said, aware that time was marching on, ‘bring me up to date on what’s happened so far.’

  He winced. ‘The whole thing’s mad. I’d just finished afternoon surgery today,’ he glanced down at the bare wrist where his watch would have been, ‘when Megan called to say that the police were at the house and wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘About what?’

  He clasped his hands at the back of his head and spoke to the ceiling. ‘Pornography.’

  ‘Child pornography?’ Stupid question. So far as the law was concerned there was only one kind. ‘And?’

  ‘I was still on the phone and next thing I knew there were two plain-clothed police officers in the waiting room. They’d come to seize my laptop. I asked them what was happening and they said that I should go home immediately - so I did.’

  ‘And I take it there were more cops waiting for you?’

  ‘Lots. They’ve taken away my PC, printer, digital camera, just about anything with a silicon chip in it. They brought me here and said they wanted to ask a few questions.’

  ‘And have they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they ask if you wanted a lawyer?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t think I needed a lawyer, I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  I’d started to laugh before I realised he was being serious.

  ‘They only wanted to ask some routine questions,’ he said, defensively.

  Newsflash: the police never ask routine questions; they’re busy people; sausage rolls and fudge doughnuts don’t eat themselves. Any questions asked would have been for one purpose and one purpose only; to extract incriminatory evidence from the suspect, whether he realised he was incriminating himself or not.

  ‘So you waited until after you’d been interviewed, arrested and told you were being kept in custody before deciding you wanted a lawyer?’ I tried to keep the note of annoyance out of my voice. The law is no different to medicine, the sooner you seek advice from an expert the better; however, it didn’t pay to be too critical of the paying clients, especially doctors; they were liable to take their Medical Defence Union hourly rate and go elsewhere. At the moment I was very much auditioning for the role of Dr Beattie’s lawyer. After all, I was only there because of a conversation he’d had with my dad.

  ‘I’ve never been in trouble before, not even a parking ticket. Can you get me out? Tonight?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. ‘It’ll be up to the duty inspector, though. If he says no, that’ll be you until Monday. A lot depends on how much evidence they have. What did you tell them?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  When clients say nothing what they usually mean is not actually nothing as in an absence of words but, rather, things which in their non-legal opinion aren’t important.

  ‘Nothing? Really?’

  ‘There was nothing much I could tell them.’ Here we go, I thought. ‘I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about and that’s all.’

  ‘Did they show you computer equipment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you confirm to them that it was yours and that you had owned it from new?’

  He nodded slowly and with a faintly quizzical expression as though I was embarking on some kind of parlour-trick, guessing game.

  ‘And they asked you and you told them that no-one else in the house used it?’

  He nodded again even, slower this time, no doubt wondering how I knew this and where I was going.

  ‘And then they asked if it was password protected?’

  Nod.

  ‘And is it?’

  ‘Yes, but, who cares? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  So in one short interview, my new client had confirmed to the police that if there were indeed any indecent images of children on his PC, there was no-one to blame but himself. That’s called narrowing the field of investigation, eliminating other possible suspects. It’s also called aborting an impeachment defence; one of the few defences open in computer-porn cases. The correct answe
rs to the questions would have been, no, I bought the PC second hand from a man wearing beer-bottle spectacles and a stained brown Mackintosh, people are always in and out my house using the internet and my password is ‘password’. An even better answer would have been, I’m saying nothing until my lawyer gets here.

  ‘What is the password?’ I asked, hoping it might indeed be password, something someone else could have guessed and used to gain access to download porn without my client’s knowledge.

  ‘La Bohème, my favourite opera.’

  My favourite opera was Aida but only because I heard somewhere that it was the shortest.

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’

  ‘The police like to use a process of elimination to show that no-one else but you had the opportunity to download any images. Leaving you—’

  ‘Holding the baby?’

  Well pictures of it anyway, I nearly said, but in times of falling prosecutions and the death by a thousand cuts of Legal Aid it didn’t pay to be flippant with the private clients. ‘You didn’t help your case, let’s put it that way.’

  ‘I told the truth.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ I took a notepad from my briefcase and jotted down some details. ‘Anyway, what’s done is done. When they examine all the equipment they’ve taken away, what do you think they’ll find?’

  ‘Do you mean will there be any child-porn?’

  I let him work that out for himself. I could see he was becoming just a teeny-bit ratty now.

  ‘Absolutely impossible.’

  It seemed less impossible to me; otherwise why was the young doctor banged up in a police cell on a Friday night waiting to join the ranks of Monday afternoon’s custody cases?

  A rattle of keys, the door opened and the custody sergeant poked his head into the room. ‘You going to be much longer?’

  I stood up, walked to the door. ‘Is the Inspector around?’

  ‘I’m sure Detective Inspector Fleming will make himself available - seeing how it’s you Mr Munro.’

  Dougie Fleming was the duty Inspector? Fleming and I had a long and acrimonious history. Our conversations were frequent, fraught and usually involved the disputed contents of his notebook, which, if ever published, would be found in the library under ‘F’ for fiction. I had a feeling that a long weekend on a hard mattress lay ahead for Dr Beattie.

  Chapter 2

  Linlithgow Sheriff Court was no more, or at least the centuries old building had been vacated and the court moved to the new and much larger town of Livingston, ten miles or so to the south. It made sense to move the administration of criminal justice closer to the criminals, but I missed the old courthouse. Yes, it had been a cramped warren of a building. Yes it had been run-down, indeed, downright unhygienic. The minute the decision had been made to build a new court elsewhere, the cleaning and maintenance staff at Linlithgow had downed tools; nonetheless, the old building, for all its faults, had great character. The new court was highly unimaginative from an architectural point of view, even if the amenities for court officials and punters alike were a huge improvement.

  Monday morning; thanks to a jack-knifed lorry on the Avon Gorge, I was running late for the custody court. Throwing on my gown, I charged into Courtroom One where I met Paul Sharp, fellow defence agent and aficionado of the swinging Sixties. In a high-lapelled, four-buttoned black suit worn over a charcoal shirt with the skinniest of yellow ties, Paul was as dedicated a follower of fashion as Ray Davies could ever have imagined. ‘No rush,’ he said. ‘They’re going to do the summary stuff first before they close the court for your Petitions. Two in the one day? Not bad. How’s your doctor client?’

  ‘Innocent, apparently.’

  Paul laughed. ‘Same as all your clients then? Would he still be so innocent if the Fiscal reduced the case to summary? Hugh Ogilvie’s doing the custodies and you know what he’s like these days. Only bothered about keeping up the conviction rates; any plea will do. Speak to him nicely - you never know your luck.’

  Speak nicely to the Procurator Fiscal? There was a first time for everything I supposed and, it was true, an early plea of guilty on a summary complaint and Glen Beattie could say ta-ta to his medical career but at least he wouldn’t go to jail. Maybe I should sound the Fiscal out, keep my client’s options open.

  Ogilvie was sitting at the table in the well of the court across from the defence agents, waiting for the Sheriff to come onto the bench. As though he’d read my thoughts, he came over and dragged me aside, away from the other agents. ‘I just want you to know that I’m prepared to keep this whole thing very quiet,’ he said.

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘The petition hearing for Dr Beattie. I’m doing my best to keep it away from prying eyes and ears.’ He threw an irritable glance in Paul’s direction. ‘You know, in the circumstances.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you,’ I replied, not sure why Ogilvie was being so reasonable; it wasn’t like him. ‘What’s the evidence?’

  ‘We got a tip-off, end of last week, that there were images on your client’s PC. The sex crime unit is looking at them right now.’

  ‘How many images and what level?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see what comes back from the High-Tech boys.’

  ‘If there’s only a few and they’re low-level pictures, what are the chances of the whole thing disappearing? You know – in the circumstances,’ I added, although, other than my client being a doctor, I wasn’t sure exactly what those were.

  ‘Hmm. Not so easy. Kiddy-porn is zero-tolerance and if it’s level four or five, it’ll definitely stay on indictment. Anything lower and for a quick plea I’ll drop it down to a summary. Can’t say fairer. Until then you can tell your client and...’ he tapped the side of his nose with an index finger, ‘other interested parties, that I’m keeping this case under wraps, at least for the moment, best I can do.’ I still had no idea what he was talking about. The PF turned to the rest of the waiting solicitors. ‘Anyone looking to plead?’

  Paul Sharp came forward. ‘I think you’ll find we’re all open to persuasion.’

  How things had changed even in the ten years or so I’d been a defence agent, or a stakeholder in the criminal justice network as the bureaucrats at Holyrood preferred now to refer to us hacks. The Scots legal system, once the envy of the world, now, so far as the Scottish Government was concerned, merely an expensive nuisance. The politicians had come to the conclusion that most of the cost of dealing with crime could be attributed to two things; firstly, a bothersome concept called the presumption of innocence, which led to people standing trial and the resulting cost of lawyers, witnesses and court time, not to mention those inconvenient findings of innocence. Secondly, there was the horrendous expense of sending people to prison. Forty grand a year to keep someone banged-up? You could just about fund an MSP’s taxi fares for that. The answer was obvious: more accused persons needed to plead guilty and less sent to jail. Simple. Why had nobody thought of it before? Lawyers were now obliged to tell their clients that guilty was good. An early enough guilty plea and an accused could expect a third off his or her sentence, so a maximum Sheriff Court sentence of five years, quickly became forty months on a plea of guilty. That discount brought it under the four year limit which meant a further full one-half remission. So an accused facing five years would be out in twenty months and out in ten or even less if released home on electronic tag. You didn’t have to be guilty to be tempted by an offer like that, and there was no incentive for your lawyer to bend over backwards to establish your innocence; not if you were a legally-aided client. Legal aid fixed-fees meant that more or less the same paltry sum was paid whether the accused pled guilty or not guilty. Why carry out a painstaking investigation, rack up hours waiting in court, go twelve rounds with some dour-faced Sheriff, all for an extra hundred quid? Why not chuck in the towel at the first bell and still pocket most of the purse?

  Fortunately for me, and thanks to the never-ending series of G.P. pay-rises, Dr Beat
tie was my very own private patient and there’d be no fixed-fee. I’d be charging out my work time and line and at a proper hourly rate. Plead guilty? He’d be pleading guilty over my dead body. Hugh Ogilvie could shove his circumstances – whatever they might be.

  ‘You never told me,’ Beattie said, as, after his brief appearance in court, we stood in the entrance hall of the court, me clutching my briefcase and my client his freshly signed bail papers. ‘If I’m found guilty - am I going to jail?’

  This was where it got even tougher, especially for an innocent man. The possession of indecent images of children was an offence often committed by middle-aged men with no past record of offending. Filling the jails with teachers, bank managers and Scout masters was a waste of prison resources, so the Appeal Court had laid down a few sentencing guidelines. If a person accused of possessing child-pornography was a first offender, did not have the images for commercial purposes and, here was the rub, pled guilty: the court was expected to impose a non-custodial sentence, which meant the imposition of a large fine or, more likely, the requirement to carry out a number of hours unpaid work as part of a community pay-back order. Go to trial and the sentencing gloves were off. In front of a jury on child-porn charges, the accused started the game a couple of goals down. Unless the defence scored a hat-trick it was jail-time. Many a man with a perfectly stateable defence opted for the definite no custody route rather than maintain his innocence and run the risk of prison. Given his fragile condition, and the size of my overdraft, I thought it best not to set out my client’s options in any great detail at this early stage of proceedings and, anyway, his declarations of innocence had been strong enough.

  ‘You’re innocent,’ I said. ‘Remember that.’

  He looked out at the lone newspaper photographer who’d been wandering around since before lunchtime. Given the PF’s assurances of the matter being kept hush-hush, I wondered how the snapper had managed to get wind of the case.