Killer Contract (Best Defence series Book 4) Read online

  ‘What? And hire Steven Spielberg to shoot a different movie?’

  Jake’s left eyelid twitched ominously. I decided to rein in the sarcasm, even though he appeared to be having trouble coming to grips with the patently obvious.

  ‘The CCTV evidence is very strong. Sometimes you just have to put your hands up,’ I said, lamely.

  ‘Aye, other people do. Not me and not Deek. Understand? I’ve a business to run. People owe me money. I've not the time to collect it myself. That's Deek's job and I can’t just find someone else with his... experience. Not just like that.’

  I could see why, even with the unemployment figures, Deek’s would be a vacancy hard to fill.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jake. But it looks like you’re going to have to put a postcard in the Job Centre window.’

  ‘Funny.’ Jake laughed. Something he almost never did except when hurting people. He stopped abruptly. ‘But, really. You’ll think of something, Robbie, because Deek’s going nowhere except back to working for me.’ He gave the side of my face a playful and yet solid scud with the flat of a grimy hand. ‘Whatever it takes.’

  Chapter 4

  ‘Going badly is it?’

  It was nice to see my dad smiling. He was at the back of his house, up a ladder poking about at a row of slates above the rain gutter.

  ‘CCTV,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t cross-examine well.’

  He clambered down. ‘I’ll bet the rain’s been getting in there all winter. Slates missing, sarking practically non-existent and there’s no felt, only horsehair.’

  ‘That’s what you get for buying a cottage, away out in the wilds.’

  ‘It’s only three or four miles from Lithgae Cross and a fat lot of good you were helping me to buy it. What's the matter? Conveyancing too difficult for you? I had to pay that lawyer a fortune in fees.’

  We’d had this conversation before. My practice was purely criminal defence. Never mind the extra professional indemnity premium involved in property law, I'd long forgotten anything I ever knew about conveyancing; something I was pretty pleased about when I’d heard of my dad’s intention to flit. I didn’t see him as the ideal client.

  ‘Still it was good of you to kick-start Scotland’s property market,’ I said. ‘Why don't you help the ailing construction industry and have someone sort the roof for you? Before you break your neck.’

  I followed him inside. The internal layout was not dissimilar to his old place. Back door leading into the kitchen, and from there to a livingroom with a bay window and a real coal fire below an impressively carved ancient mantelpiece. I think it was the fireplace that had swung it for the old man. That and the great big Belfast sink in the kitchen.

  ‘It’s my birthday next month,’ he said, with a vague wave of the hand, a gesture which I'd come to recognise as a direct order to make a cup of tea.

  My dad and I were both April babies. It was a month that saw the ritual exchange of malt whiskies between father and son. ‘Which Islay distillery is to have the privilege this year?’ I asked. ‘You decide the malt and I’ll decide the age of it.’

  ‘I’m not wanting whisky this year.’ And, having made that startling announcement, he sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the newspaper. ‘I want a surprise party.’

  Overlooking the whole lack-of–surprise side of things, I wondered what had got into my old man, who usually moaned about attending any formal social event to which he was invited.

  ‘You had a party when you retired.’

  ‘That was ages ago.’

  ‘Seven years.’

  ‘Ach, that was different. It was work related. Anyway, I can hardly remember it.’

  Not surprising given the amount of drink that had been taken. Anyone who could remember my dad’s retirement do, hadn't actually been there.

  He folded the newspaper to the crossword. ‘I’ll let you have a list of folk to invite. After that it’s just a case of organising food and nibbles. Maybe a balloon or two. You don’t have to go crazy with bunting, and if you’re worried about music—’

  ‘I wasn't planning to lose any sleep.’

  ‘...get the number of the Red River Trio from Brendan down at the Red Corner.’ He filled in an answer and then scratched the top of his head with the pen while considering the next question. ‘And tell your brother to show face. Maybe bring a couple of his football pals with him.’

  ‘Venue?’ I enquired, rinsing out the teapot with boiling water before dropping in a couple of teabags.

  ‘Here of course. It’ll be like a housewarming and my birthday rolled into one.’ He looked at the ceiling, tapping his lower lip with the ballpoint. ‘I’ll need to get that roof fixed though.’ He got up and from an overhead cupboard brought down his favourite enormous teacup and a mug for me. ‘You back at Falkirk tomorrow?’

  He wanted a favour. ‘Yes, but I’ll be very busy.’ Busy on the receiving end of a guilty verdict and trying to dodge the wrath of Jake Turpie.

  ‘Too busy to nip into the wee DIY shop next door to the court?’ From somewhere my dad produced a packet of Tunnock’s teacakes and slid one across the table at me. ‘When you’re there, pick us up a roll of felt and tin of that tarry stuff, will you?’

  Chapter 5

  Next morning, crack of eight-thirty, I came across Joanna and Grace-Mary in my room, poring over the court diary, trying to decipher my handwriting.

  ‘Is that supposed to be a ‘G’?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘I know,’ Grace-Mary agreed, ‘It looks more like a squiggly ‘S’, doesn’t it?’

  My bad handwriting was just one of the many reasons why Grace-Mary favoured the typed word. The dubious benefits of a computer diary had been the topic of many a frank discussion, usually with my secretary doing most of the discussing, and I was concerned that she was now grooming an IT acolyte.

  ‘So, Joanna,’ I butted in, ‘how did the flashing trial go, yesterday?’

  She looked up at me through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Erect, was it?’

  ‘You could have run a flag up it and saluted.’

  ‘Oh, well. Not to worry.’ I stepped between them and took the diary. There were far too many empty spaces. The drop in prosecutions across Scotland was really beginning to bite. Too many people were on the receiving end of fixed-fines that they could conveniently not bother to pay. I closed the diary and sat down behind my desk. ‘Anyway, don’t let me keep you,’ I said.

  ‘From what?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘From your next trial.’ I tapped a finger on the front cover of the diary. ‘At Slassow District Court?’ Only I found that reference to my handwriting amusing.

  Joanna pulled a face. ‘Not Glasgow District, Robbie. It’s a dump. When I was a Fiscal they used to threaten you with six months transfer there if you didn’t toe the line. Believe me never was a line so well toed.’

  ‘Tell me you’re not asking Joanna to do the dog case?’ Grace-Mary pleaded on behalf of my assistant. ‘Not Billy Fitzpatrick?’ She lifted the diary and turned to the date as though it might be wrong. It wasn’t.

  ‘Dog case?’ Joanna brightened. ‘Suppose it might be all right. I’ve got some good dangerous dog authorities tucked away somewhere that should come in handy.’

  ‘It’s not so much a dangerous dog case,’ I said, as she was about to leave in search of law books. ‘More of a domestic breach, slash, section forty-seven combo.’

  ‘Section forty-seven? An offensive weapon? What’s that got to do with dogs?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Grace-Mary said.

  ‘Not that section forty-seven,’ I said. ‘The other one.’

  It took Joanna’s finely-tuned legal mind a few seconds to sift through the various legislative possibilities. ‘The Civic Government Act? What? Urinating in a public place?’

  Grace-Mary folded her arms. ‘Not urinating. Try again.’

  ‘Stop being so melodramatic,’ I told my secretary. ‘What’s the problem? It’s just a wee domestic. Billy's new burd locked hi
m out because she thought he was drunk.’

  Grace-Mary pulled the case file from a cabinet. ‘The man’s never sober.’

  ‘And so he knocked on the door a few times.’

  ‘With his boots,’ Grace-Mary clarified.

  ‘Perhaps slightly too loudly for that time of night.’

  ‘At what point does the dog appear in this story?’ Joanna enquired.

  ‘It appeared from nowhere,’ I said.

  Joanna cocked an eyebrow. ‘And?’

  ‘And did plop-plops on the front door mat.’ Grace-Mary closed her eyes and held out the offending file.

  ‘Plop-plops?’ Joanna took it from her. ‘A big dog done it and ran away? Really, Robbie? Is that the best defence your client can come up with?’

  It was and he’d needed help coming up with even that. ‘Look don’t start,’ I said, noticing that Joanna had rolled up the file in her hand and was gripping it as though she wanted to swat something. ‘You’re not a Fiscal now. Put the old tin helmet on, fix bayonets and be glad your old employers are actually prosecuting something. I’d go myself, but there’s still a day left in Deek Pudney’s trial.’

  A voice from the doorway. ‘Do you think I'll get in trouble if I print this?’

  The three of us turned to see Kaye Mitchell standing holding up a mocked-up front page. Kaye was editor of the Linlithgow Gazette and one of Jill's best pals. Presumably because of my romantic affiliation with her friend, she seemed to think that made me her free legal help-line, and the fact that my office was practically next door to hers meant that visits were not infrequent, and usually when I was dashing out of the door or had a client waiting to see me. Kaye had never troubled to see the inside of my waiting room, a drab room with a couple of wobbly wooden chairs usually occupied by one alleged criminal or another, and not for those of a nervous disposition or with concerns over health and safety.

  ‘What do you think? Is it Corntonvale-here-I-come or will I get away with community service?’ She glanced about the room. ‘I could start here. When did this place last get a coat of paint?’

  Kaye and Jill had been classmates, the year below me, and when, apparently, how to be nippy was part of the school curriculum.

  The phone rang in reception and Grace-Mary went off to answer it.

  ‘It's not called community service anymore,’ I said, dragging the conversation away from the decorative state of my room; something Grace-Mary was always harping on about, threatening to get her retired brother-in-law in to ‘smarten the place up a bit,’ and no doubt supplement his state pension to the detriment of Munro & Co's already poor standing with the bank. ‘It's now a community payback order.’

  ‘There a difference?’

  Not that I had noticed. To my mind it was just the Scottish Government tinkering with the criminal justice system by re-branding sentencing disposals to make the voters think something was being done.

  ‘Let me have a look.’ I took the sheet of paper and read the headline: ‘Linlithgow’s Burke and Hare’. ‘What’s it about?’ I felt obliged to ask, though I didn’t want to. It was a quarter to nine, I had to be at Falkirk Sheriff Court by ten and my jury speech was a work of fiction still in progress.

  ‘The two boys that tried to rob the tomb. Have you not heard?’

  Boys from Linlithgow charged with a crime and I hadn’t been instructed? What was the world coming to? ‘Have they been convicted?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Charged?’

  ‘They’re up in court later in the week. They were caught red-handed, I heard, and so I expect they'll be pleading guilty.’

  Why Kaye, after years of court reporting, thought that guilt and a guilty plea went hand in hand, I didn't know. ‘I think you'd be safer waiting until they do before you go convicting them in your paper,’ I said.

  Joanna stuffed Billy Fitzpatrick’s case-file in her enormous handbag and pushed past Kaye out of the room.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Kaye asked. ‘And don’t say time of the month or I’ll belt you.’

  ‘She’s not enamoured with the quality of work she’s getting here.’

  ‘Maybe she should leave. Look at the case Andy got. Larry Kirkslap? Now that’s what I call a quality client. You been following the trial? Completely done out of the park, of course, but—’

  ‘Do you mind?’ As unsubtly as possibly I stared at Kaye and then at the door. ‘I’m busy. I have some work to do for one of my lesser quality clients. Millionaire entrepreneurs or not, everyone gets the same gold standard of service at Munro & Co.’ After a brief hunt around I located Deek Pudney’s file. It had fallen off the side of my desk and the insides had spilled across the floor.

  ‘How’s Jill doing?’ Kaye asked, ignoring my invitation to leave. ‘Six weeks in Berne? All right for some.’

  I stooped to gather Deek's paperwork. ‘She's working.’

  ‘Course she is.’ Kaye sat down. ‘How are you two doing - romantically? Can't be easy. I know what these long distance relationships are like. I've time for a quick coffee, if you want to talk.’

  ‘I've got to go, Kaye.’ I put Deek’s file in my briefcase. I could mull over my jury speech in the car and jot something down when I got to the court. ‘Grace-Mary will make you a cup of coffee if you ask her nicely.’

  And then it dawned on me. If Kaye and my secretary got chatting, it would be only a matter of time until the engagement ring was mentioned, and I didn't want word filtering back to Jill. It was almost nine o’clock. Falkirk Sheriff Court was twenty minutes away.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Why don't we go down to Sandy's and chat about my love-life over a proper cup of coffee?’

  Kaye crumpled the front page and lobbed the ball of paper over my head, nearly into the waste paper bin. ‘Let's go,’ she said, linking an arm through mine.

  Deek Pudney would just have to settle for Munro & Co.’s bronze standard of service.

  Chapter 6

  Grant Goodwin was a Stoke City fan. Somebody had to be. More importantly, he was Sheriff Clerk and even more importantly he owed me a tenner. A few months back, Grant had been in unusually buoyant mood following a famous win over Manchester United at the Potteries, and I’d felt it time to put into practice a gambling theory I’d been working on - or, at least, my dad had.

  The old man had noticed that in those games where a footballing minnow took a bite out of a championship-contending shark, the minnows went on to do badly in their next game. Whether it was over-confidence at having just beaten a blue-chip team, or because they were knackered after their efforts the week before, they almost always lost. With Stoke sitting comfortably mid-table and their next match also a home game and against some bottom-feeder or other, Grant had been happy to shake hands on a bet. He even gave me the draw.

  ‘You’ll get your money,’ he said, after I'd brought back bad memories of the nil-nil with Norwich City, just like I had the last few times I’d been at Falkirk. I was hoping to clarify the precise date of payment when Stacey the bar officer entered the courtroom, jurors following on behind. We’d had the speeches and the Sheriff’s charge and the jury had been out for forty-five minutes; a lot longer than I'd thought it would take them to come up with a unanimous guilty; however, they hadn’t reached a decision yet and were simply being brought back so as to be given permission to have lunch.

  In days long past, the jury was not allowed to eat or drink while it considered its verdict: it helped speed things up. Nowadays, it was something of an anachronism, but many old-school judges still insisted on the jury returning so as to be formally told they could break bread.

  ‘Lunch has been provided,’ the Sheriff intoned. ‘You may temporarily cease your deliberations, eat and recommence at one-forty-five.’

  ‘All rise!’ bellowed the bar officer. Fifteen slightly bemused jurors who had only just sat down were led off again, while his Lordship rose from the bench to something better than soup and sarnies.

  ‘What was all that a
bout?’

  I turned to see the decidedly unhappy features of Jake Turpie. I told him, but he still didn't understand. ‘It’s not actually the law, more like a tradition nowadays, but most Sheriffs don't like to take any chances.’ Not this close to a conviction they didn't.

  I turned to catch sight of a black gown disappearing out of the side door as Grant slipped into the private corridor that served the shrieval chambers.

  A tap on the shoulder. Jake again. ‘I hope I’m not going to be disappointed,’ he said, giving me a stare so cold it could have sunk the Titanic.

  If by disappointed he meant not seeing Big Deek for the next few years, I had some bad news for him. It could wait. I returned a smile that could have been filed under ‘sickly’, muttered something about how you never knew with a jury, and we walked down the stairs, parting company in the lobby where I took a sharp left through the security door into the sanctuary of the agents’ room.

  Inside, discarded black gowns were flung about the place, while their former wearers gathered around a big table stacked with case files, eating Panini’s from the court café. Conversation ranged widely, from football to the latest Supreme Court ruling to cruel and unusual ways of torturing senior members of the Scottish Legal Aid Board. Time flew by. The loudspeaker in the ceiling announced that the custody court was about to start in Court 3. Those around the table reached for their gowns, while continuing discussions that had moved on to cult children’s TV programme the Banana Splits.

  It was then that I remembered the roofing materials my dad had asked me to pick up. It was almost two o’clock. It wouldn’t take the jury much longer to reach a decision. They'd probably only stalled this far for the free lunch. I didn’t want to hang around after the trial was over in case I bumped into Jake again; better to nip along and buy the stuff now before the jury came back with a verdict.

  So, leaving behind great legal minds that were now desperately trying to recall the name of the donkey in Arabian Knights, I broke into an amble and headed for the DIY store; the sort of place where you could spend hours browsing, finding things you never knew you needed, while wondering how you’d managed to do without them. Unfortunately, my plans to be in and out of the place in under five minutes were derailed by a young lad in a ‘Chaos in Kavos’ T-shirt, who was the only member of staff on duty, and whose idea of hardware probably had a lot more to with the latest graphics card than hammers and chisels. When I went in, ringing the bell above the door, he was negotiating with an old guy in dungarees for the sale of a pound of two-inch brads. Once the pair of them had worked out that a pound was about half a kilo and the customer had explained that a brad was the same as a nail, but different, the shop assistant disappeared through the back, not returning for fully ten minutes. When he did materialise, carrying a heavy looking cardboard box, the flakes of pastry he brushed from the side of his mouth suggested that he might have stumbled across a bridie during the course of the great brad hunt.