Killer Contract (Best Defence series Book 4) Read online

  Killer Contract

  Fourth in the Best Defence Series

  WHS McIntyre

  Copyright © 2014

  William H.S. McIntyre

  All Rights Reserved

  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.

  www.bestdefence.biz

  Others in this series:

  #1 Relatively Guilty

  #2 Duty Man

  #3 Sharp Practice

  #5 Crime Fiction

  #6 Last Will

  #7 Present Tense

  #8 Good News Bad News (Out 2017)

  It’s 99% of lawyers that give the other 1% a bad name.

  ~ Police Sergeant Alex Munro (retired) ~

  Chapter 1

  It was the court case of the year; the decade. In fact, as we were only thirteen years in, the millennium: Lawrence ‘Larry’ Kirkslap, Scotland's most flamboyant entrepreneur, standing trial for the murder of Violet Hepburn; a good time gal who, according to all the evidence, had met with a very bad end.

  It's always a good start to any murder defence if the alleged victim's body cannot be found; however, over the previous four weeks, the Crown had laid before the jury a gilt-edged prosecution case, studded with gems of circumstantial evidence. A circumstantial case is often likened to the making of a rope, where strands of evidence are gathered to form a cord strong enough to support a conviction. By all accounts, if you weaved together the strands of evidence against Larry Kirkslap, you could have made a noose to hang an elephant.

  And yet, to watch Kirkslap stride out through the big bronze doors of Edinburgh High Court and onto the Royal Mile, you would never have thought he'd been sitting in the dock for over a month. Florid-faced and smiling, he waved to photographers, joked with the journalists, and there, by his side, jogging to keep up, his lawyer: Andy bleeding Imray.

  I punched a cushion.

  ‘Oh, stop it, Robbie.’ Jill flopped down on the sofa beside me. ‘It's your own fault, you've said it often enough: if you'd stayed with Caldwell & Craig, you'd be dealing with all the rich clients too.’

  ‘Yes, but Andy? Dealing with a case like that? What does he know about anything?’ If my old firm, Caldwell and Craig, was an albatross in the world of legal seagulls, Andy was a barely-hatched chick.

  ‘You should be happy for him,’ Jill said. ‘I'm sure it’ll be fine. After all, you taught him everything you know.’

  ‘Don't say it.’

  She did. ‘Not that it would have taken very long.’

  After I'd watched the news report and struck Jill on the head with a cushion, I was flicking through the Wednesday night channels, looking for the second half of a Champions League match, when ordered to halt. Jill was an ardent fan of U.S. medical soaps. In the one I'd inadvertently stumbled across, a patient was busy having a heart attack. White-coated actors charged about with crash-carts, wielding heart defibrillator paddles and shouting, ‘clear!’ It was all very glossy and highly dramatic. There was probably a U.K. version in which a bored NHS 24 call-centre operator told someone it was only indigestion.

  After a momentary pause, during which, at the third attempt, the patient was shocked back into the land of the living, I continued onwards through the adverts in search of football, until Jill snatched the TV controls from me and held them above her head.

  ‘My house, my remote,’ she said.

  ‘I see. Then by that law, it's your house and these are all your plants.’ I wafted a careless hand at the various pot plants scattered about. ‘They're going to be very thirsty when you come back from Switzerland in six weeks’ time.’

  ‘You wouldn't really let my plants die?’

  Some single women kept cats. Jill had a room full of house plants with names I'd never heard of before, all, apparently, in need of frequent TLC and lashings of H2O while she was away on business.

  ‘You've been to my office,’ I said.

  Jill shuddered. She was thinking of my umbrella plant. ‘Is that thing even alive?’

  The answer to that was: barely and purely out of spite. The only moisture the plant ever received was the bottom of a cup of coffee, the only mineral sustenance, the ash of smoker-clients whom I made stub their cigarettes out in the pot of rock hard soil. And yet the umbrella plant remained; even, occasionally, sprouting a tiny, defiant green leaf. Its survival was an inspiration to us all at Munro & Co; an encouragement to keep on going, no matter how tough things became. Secretly, I admired its tenacity to endure despite life's many hardships. Mostly I just ignored it. That was what worried Jill.

  ‘You'd better not neglect my plants when I'm away. I want you through here regularly. Just follow the instructions I gave you. That's not going to be a problem is it?’

  I vaguely recalled a piece of paper Jill had given to me a few days earlier, containing descriptions and locations of various plants as well as some stuff about dead-heading, watering from the base up and other confusing horticultural terminology.

  ‘Depends,’ I said.

  ‘On what?’

  I reached up and grabbed the remote from her hand. ‘On whether you let me watch the football in peace.’

  Jill curled an arm around my neck. Nippy to sweetie in under fifteen seconds. ‘Watch football?’ she said, her lips close to my ear, making me shiver, but in a good way. ‘Is that really what you want to do on the last evening before I fly off for a month and a half?’ She put her other hand inside the neck of my shirt and stoked my chest. She stood, took my hand, pulled me from the couch and tried, successfully as it happened, to drag me off in the direction of the bedroom. Suddenly, I realised how close we'd become over the few months we'd been together, how much I'd miss Jill when she was away. The football I could catch up with later on the highlights programme.

  ‘Will you miss me when I’m not here?’ she asked.

  I switched off the telly and threw the remote onto a nearby armchair.

  ‘Oh, probably,’ I said.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Bad idea.’ Joanna snapped shut the small velvet box and handed it back to me.

  The partner and staff of Munro & Co., all three of us, had gathered for an impromptu meeting in my room, Monday morning.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s lovely, but it’s not the actual ring that’s the problem - it’s the whole concept.’ So said Joanna Jordan, former Procurator Fiscal-depute, now my assistant: poacher turned gamekeeper, or perhaps it was the other way around. She’d not taken long to form a double-act with my secretary when it came to organising my professional and now, it seemed, private life. I was beginning to wish I’d never asked for a female opinion. They had so many.

  I opened the box again. ‘Look at the size of that diamond. That’s a full carat. Nearly.’

  ‘What Joanna is trying to say,’ Grace-Mary said, ‘is that buying an engagement ring is a nice thought...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But it smacks of arrogance,’ Joanna clarified further.

  ‘I wouldn’t say it was arrogant,’ Grace-Mary said, ‘but, yes, definitely a teeny-wee bit presumptuous.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘It’s like you were saying: I’m going to ask you to marry me, but as we both know you’re going to say yes, I’ve just gone ahead and bought the ring. Now off you go, doll, smack on the arse, there’s probably a pile of ironing to do.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Let’s assume for just one nano-second that Jill doesn’t think I’m arrogant.’ I turned what I hoped was a steely gaze on Joanna. ‘Let’s say, purely for
the purpose of argument, that she loves me and she loves the ring.’

  The staff stared at each other clearly struggling to come to grips with my naiveté.

  Joanna sighed. ‘Love's got nothing to do with it, Robbie. And it doesn’t matter how nice the ring is. You’re going to have to face it, there’s no way Jill, or any self-respecting wife-to-be, is going to let you think you made the correct choice in something as significant as an engagement ring. That only happens in the movies.’

  Grace-Mary screwed up her face in sympathy with Joanna’s words. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on you if she did. To simply accept the ring would lay down a misleading marker—’

  ‘Set a false precedent,’ Joanna said. Obviously she thought that translating things into legal jargon would help me understand. It didn’t.

  ‘And that precedent would be?’ I dared to ask.

  ‘That you actually knew what you were doing and didn’t require the expert guidance of your wife in all matters of any importance,’ Grace-Mary explained. She lifted a wire basket of mail from my desk and took it over to the filing cabinet. ‘When are you going to shift this monstrosity?’ She gave the cabinet a kick. ‘It would be much better against that other wall out of the way, and there’s no time like the present.’

  ‘So,’ Joanna clapped her hands together, ‘are we done here?’

  ‘No, not quite.’ I opened a drawer and threw the subject of our discussion into it. From one of the piles on my desk I extracted a file and handed it to her.

  ‘What's this?’

  ‘A wee trial for you. I can’t do it. I’ve got a jury starting in Falkirk.’

  Joanna opened the file and grimaced. ‘Indecent exposure?’

  ‘Don’t worry it’s dead straightforward. The accused is in his own bedroom. How is he supposed to know that passing school girls are going to look in?’

  She skimmed through the papers. ‘Maybe if he didn’t press his genitals against the window they wouldn’t.’

  ‘He’d had a shower and was drying himself.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Joanna was having difficulty remembering that she was a defence agent now.

  ‘Don't worry,’ I told her. ‘As ever with these types of cases it will all come down to—’

  ‘Credibility and reliability?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Flaccid or erect. Now get going.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Grace-Mary asked, after Joanna had left for court, more in hope than anticipation of finding a limp penis. ‘You’re really going to ask Jill to marry you? What’s the plan? Romantic dinner somewhere nice?’ She yanked open a filing cabinet drawer. ‘My Frank proposed to me at an England/Scotland game. I should have known something was up. I’d never been to a football match before and then he whisks me off for the Wembley weekend in nineteen eighty-one. Scotland got a penalty and Jim went down on one knee. I thought he was saying a prayer at first.’ She stared down at the fourth finger of her left hand where there was only a simple gold band. ‘It was a lovely engagement ring until I lost the diamond on holiday. We were always going to have it replaced… then Frank took ill… I don’t even know where the ring is now.’

  ‘John Robertson, wasn’t it?’ I asked, in an attempt to evade the risk of emotional dialogue.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who scored the penalty that won the match.’

  Grace-Mary looked up from her finger. I thought her eyes looked a little red-rimmed. ‘Frank had a tenner on England. He always bet against Scotland. It was his idea of an insurance policy.’

  ‘Must have made a few quid in his time,’ I said.

  Grace-Mary gave me a wry look, cleared her throat. ‘Talking of which, where are you getting the money to buy an engagement ring?’

  ‘There are two ways of making a profit,’ I said. ‘Increasing sales or decreasing overheads.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve done a deal that will help us cut-back on the rent.’

  ‘A deal with Jake Turpie?’ Grace-Mary knew Munro & Co.'s landlord as well as I did. Jake was a scrap dealer, a money lender, a part-time, second-hand car salesman and a full-time, first-rate psycho.

  ‘Yeah, I’m doing Deek Pudney’s trial in lieu of three months’ rent.’

  ‘And if he’s found guilty...?’

  I didn't like to think about it.

  Grace-Mary took a letter from the wire basket and slipped the edge into a paper punch. ‘I'll tell you what - an all-expenses paid trip to the bottom of Linlithgow Loch.’

  I lifted my briefcase. ‘Relax. Have some confidence in me.’

  ‘I will and I do.’ Grace-Mary slammed her hand down on the paper punch. ‘But take your swim-suit with you just in case.’

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday. Day two of a trial that had started off badly, and was going downhill faster than the Weight Watchers bobsleigh team. The only light relief was the new bar officer. Someone in Scottish Courts HR had outdone themselves. Stacey was pretty, young, female and blonde; not the usual gruff, male ex-cop supplementing a police pension, and, unlike the normal geriatric recruit, seemed quite at home with digital technology. A press of a button and the monitor screens around Courtroom 1 of Falkirk Sheriff Court illuminated.

  ‘Should have pled at the first diet,’ the Procurator Fiscal chirped across the well of the court to me. She smiled in the general direction of the jury box; more stony faces than Easter Island. One of them, beard, tweed jacket, shirt and tie, I just knew would end up as foreman. He had the look of a headmaster. Facial hair and the teaching profession never bode well for us purveyors of a reasonable doubt.

  I glanced around at my client, sitting impassively in the dock. Shaved head, steel grey suit over a black turtleneck, Deek Pudney was eighteen stones of gristle and bad intentions, the right hand of Jake Turpie who was sitting watching the proceedings from the back row of the public benches.

  Normally, in any court case in which Jake held an interest, a defence lawyer could be assured of one of two things: either the witnesses wouldn’t show up, or the witnesses wouldn’t speak up; both excellent lines of defence, but neither available on this occasion.

  Deek was charged with assault; a very bad assault on an undercover police officer, codename ‘Joe’. Undercover Joe’s duties concerned the tracking down of heroin suppliers, and he’d found what he considered a fool-proof method. In full Junkie mode, Joe would roll up at a Sheriff Court near you, usually on an afternoon when there were Drug Treatment and Testing Order reviews taking place, come over all pathetic and rattling with the assembled junkies and ask where he could ‘get’. A phone call later, he’d have a name and a meeting point. Joe would then buy a tenner bag and put a tail on his provider, whose house would promptly be raided by the drug squad. Bingo: one ready-to-go prosecution. Entrapment only worked as a defence if the dealer had been persuaded by Joe to do something he wouldn’t have done otherwise, and, nine times out of ten, a search produced bags of smack, digital scales, tick-lists, text messages and all the other paraphernalia required to establish an on-going concern in the supply of diamorphine.

  Yes, undercover Joe had it all worked out, or thought he had, until poor directions and an ignorance of the local geography led him to Jake’s henchman loitering on a Street corner in Bo'ness. How undercover Joe could have confused shaven-headed, suit-wearing, muscle-bound Deek as a Junkie, I’d never understood: unless he thought he’d struck gold and been referred, not to the usual street-dealer, selling to feed his own habit, but Mr Big. That was a mistake. As was Joe’s refusal to take no for an answer. Deek was a tall man, but his temper was about as short as his neck.

  With a press of another button, a CCTV recording played. The time display at the bottom left of the screen showed 13:46. Broad daylight; not a good time to be committing crime: an excellent one for optimum video quality.

  One or two jurors put hands to face as digitalised Deek straight-armed Joe and then with a raised knee caught him again on his way down to the pavement. Had the film show stopped there I mig
ht just have managed to argue that Deek had felt threatened having been accosted by the pseudo-junkie; however, other requirements of a defence of self-defence were the use of necessary and proportionate force. I guessed that stamping in turn on each of now unconscious, undercover-Joe’s elbows and doing the same to each knee might come under the heading of cruel excess.

  The recording concluded at 13:48 and with it the Crown case. The CCTV operator, a couple of cops and a consultant orthopaedic surgeon had given evidence as had Joe himself, though not from the witness box: from a wheelchair, one leg and two arms still in plaster two months after the incident.

  When court adjourned for the day, Deek having been carted back off to Barlinnie, I found Jake waiting outside for me. The decidedly unamused features of Munro & Co.’s landlord were, as ever, situated above the oil-stained boiler suit that was his choice of apparel for every occasion.

  ‘How’s it looking?’ he asked.

  I wondered if Jake had been watching the same trial as me. ‘It's looking like five years - that’s if Deek’s lucky and escapes a remit to the High Court for sentencing.’

  ‘Would serve him right. The man’s an idiot. Getting into fights with the polis?’ Jake hawked and spat in the gutter. ‘And getting caught on telly? Mad.’

  He was taking the news well. To reach a deal on my fee, I'd had to step into the realms of tentative optimism in my pre-trial discussions with Jake, and feared he might be harbouring unrealistic expectations. We walked towards the rear of the court where my beat-up Alfa and Jake’s muddy Transit van were parked. One or two of the jurors, including beardy, were already outside, lighting up cigarettes.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ Jake asked.

  ‘The plan?’

  ‘Aye, to get him off.’

  I stopped.

  ‘He’s not getting off. Did you not see the video?’

  Jake stared blankly at me for a moment or two. ‘How about we get some witnesses to say it was the cop that attacked Deek?’ he said at last.