Killer Contract (Best Defence series Book 4) Read online

  It was a good twenty minutes later, then, that I left the shop carrying a tin of bitumen and a roll of roofing-felt which was a lot heavier than it looked. As I struggled back to my car, I could see, down to my left, some smokers congregated at the back door of the court. I could make out two G4S officers, white shirts, red and blue striped ties, a social worker, Stacey the new court officer and three jurors, including beardy, all puffing away. If the foreman-to-be of the jury was still mulling things over, I had plenty of time. I put the stuff in the boot of my car, collected my gown and case file from the agents' room and wandered up the stairs to a deserted Court 1; deserted except for a certain Sheriff Clerk, in shirt sleeves, black court gown hung over the back of his chair, writing up the minutes.

  ‘Oh, it's you,’ he said.

  I rubbed thumb and index finger.

  ‘You don't give up, do you?’ He sighed and made a pretence of patting himself down. ‘My wallet's downstairs in my jacket. I'll get your money later.’ He glanced at the red digits of the clock above the witness box: 14:27. ‘I'd nip down just now but the jury will be back any moment. Don't know what they're thinking about to be honest.’ He unhooked his gown from the back of his chair.

  I took my seat in the well of the court. ‘You've got bags of time,’ I said. ‘Half the jury are at the back door having a smoke.’

  Grant, wrestling with his gown, one arm in and trying to catch the baggy sleeve with his other hand, looked up at me, grinning. ‘Yeah, right.’

  I wasn’t sure why he'd found what I'd said funny. His grin faded. He studied my face closely. ‘I'll... I'll just fetch your money,’ he said, eventually. Standing up, he cast his gown aside and shot out of the door.

  Chapter 7

  Deek Pudney crushed my hand in his great hairy mitt. In his other he clutched a TESCO carrier bag containing the few personal belongings he hadn’t left behind at Barlinnie Prison. We were outside Falkirk Sheriff Court and Deek was breathing in his first lungfuls of fresh air in three months. Jake was waiting for us in the pub. The Roman Bar was situated less than fifty yards from the front door of the court, and many accused persons and witnesses found it a handy place to relax while waiting for their case to call. I’d had clients who’d become so relaxed they’d had difficulty returning to court.

  I walked in beneath the shadow of the recently-liberated Deek, to find Jake sitting at the bar drinking a glass of ginger beer. ‘You!’ He chucked a bunch of keys at Deek. They bounced of his chest and landed at his feet. ‘Wait in the van.’

  The big man stared longingly at the rows of beer taps then picked up the keys and about-turned.

  ‘Eejit,’ Jake muttered as Deek retreated and I pulled up a stool next to him. Wherever Jake sat there were always seats available in the immediate vicinity. ‘You see what I’ve got to work with? The man’s not done a hand’s turn for three months and he thinks he can just stroll in here for a pint?’

  I shouted up a lager tops. In a place like the Roman Bar that was probably considered a cocktail.

  ‘He with you, Mr Turpie?’ the barman set a pint in front of me, suds slopping down the side of the tumbler onto a sodden beer mat.

  Jake nodded and there was no further talk of payment, which was good because I'd spent all my money on tar and roofing felt.

  Jake was quiet, staring at his drink, turning the tall glass this way and that. He was thinking about something. Never a good sign. ‘Three months free rent?’ he exclaimed, at last.

  I knew what was coming.

  ‘What? For a two—’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘...day trial?’ Jake gulped down half his ginger beer with one swift, angry, flick of the wrist.

  I drank an inch. The lager-tops was good and cold. ‘It takes Lionel Messi two seconds to score a goal,’ I told my landlord, ‘and he earns more in a week than I do in a year. You’re paying for my expertise. We agreed: three months rent-free. Remember that thing we did with our hands? That was called a handshake.’

  Everything with Jake was done on a hand shake. He didn’t trust anything to paper.

  ‘You got him off, I suppose,’ he grunted, finishing his drink.

  I summoned up as much modesty as I could muster. ‘All in a day’s work. Had to be my speech that swung it.’ Truth was, there hadn’t been an awful lot to say. I'd just given them the usual smoke and mirror stuff with some scales of justice thrown in. A female juror in the front row had spent most of my speech tidying up her cuticles, while the young man beside her practised his doodling skills on the pad of paper he’d been given to note the evidence. Even as I reached a crescendo, banging on about the presumption of innocence, no-one seemed particularly bothered and Beardy had failed to stifle a yawn.

  ‘You always were lucky,’ Jake said.

  ‘Lucky? You saw the CCTV.’ I took another sip from my pint. ‘Luck had nothing to do with it.’

  And it was true. The victory had not been down to luck, nor, I had to concede, but didn’t, down to my jury speech. Although in Deek's case the witnesses had shown up and spoken up, someone in authority had cocked-up. That person was an inexperienced court officer called Stacey who had yet to be introduced to section 99 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995; a section with which I hadn’t been entirely familiar with myself.

  In any trial, the average jury spent a lot of time in the jury room. At coffee breaks, lunch or when there was legal argument in court, the jurors were removed from the courtroom, and, during those downtimes, court officers would escort the tobacco addicts outside for a nicotine fix. That is until the jury was asked to retire and consider its verdict. At that stage in proceedings, Section 99 applied; a section that was drafted in the days of smoke-filled jury rooms; legislation that prohibited jurors from leaving the jury room other than for exceptional circumstances. Choking for a smoke didn't count. Unfortunately, for one shiny new court officer, for the Crown and, admittedly in this case, for the interests of justice, Section 99(3) said that, if it happened, ‘the accused shall be acquitted’. No ifs, buts or maybes. (see author's note at end)

  The first I knew about it was when Grant Goodwin called me and the PF into chambers. Sheriff Marcus Blue was one of the nicest men to don a horsehair wig. The last time I'd been at Falkirk he'd found the case against my client not proven and then told the accused not to do it again. Sheriff Blue wasn't a soft sentencer, but you couldn't ask for a fairer judge.

  As the clerk led us into the room, I noticed the blonde-haired court officer, was already there, palely loitering by the side of the Sheriff's desk.

  ‘We all make mistakes,’ Sheriff Blue pronounced, after he'd put the PF and myself in the picture. ‘What's important is that we learn from them. Isn't that right?’ Stacey smiled thinly, blinking back tears. ‘Good, then there’s no need to prolong the agony, or,’ he looked me in the eye, ‘to seek unwanted publicity.’ He swivelled in his chair to face the Sheriff Clerk. ‘Mr Goodwin?’

  The Clerk opened the door and the bar officer drifted out of the room leaving behind a trail of perfume. I had a feeling an ex-cop would have made a less dignified exit, courtesy of a foot up his back-side.

  Audience over, we returned to court, the PF muttering under her breath and Grant Goodwin saying something about me having all the luck. It was a moment to savour and so magnanimous did I feel at that moment that I almost told the Clerk to forget the tenner he owed me. Almost.

  Chapter 8

  Hang a thief when he's young and he’ll not steal when he's old. The words of the 18th Century judge Lord Braxfield. He had a kindred spirit in Sheriff Albert Brechin, West Lothian’s most senior Sheriff, a judge not troubled by doubts, especially reasonable ones, and Scotland’s best advert for the jury system.

  ‘Your client is guilty, Mr Munro.’ Brechin waved a thick sheaf of papers at me. ‘I'll not bother to read the schedule of previous convictions, I'll weigh it later.’

  Forty-eight hours on, and the glowing ash on my smoking jury success had lengthened and crumbled as
I was brought back to earth with a conviction. Fortunately for my latest client, though the Sheriff’s spirit was willing, his sentencing powers on a summary case were limited.

  ‘Appeal it, Robbie!’ my client yelled to me as he was led away to the cells below.

  ‘And get us out on interim lib!’

  Bail pending an appeal? Perhaps he'd like a note of next week's winning lottery numbers too.

  High up on the bench, Sheriff Brechin grunted in satisfaction, pushed back his chair and climbed to his feet.

  ‘All rise!’ the court officer called to the deserted courtroom. The witnesses and any spectators had already left. Apart from the Clerk, a court officer and me, the place was empty. Lunch-time on a fine Friday afternoon in March, the townsfolk of Livingston had better things to do than watch another toe-rag get his comeuppance.

  I waited until the court officer had led the Sheriff off to his chambers, then removed my black gown and draped it over a shoulder. Ten past one. The trial had lasted nearly three hours; longer than anticipated, mainly due to Brechin's infuriating habit of having the evidence given at dictation speed so that he could note it down, which he did using a fountain pen that moved very slowly and required regular replenishment. The legal aid fixed fee for a trial was capped at one-hundred pounds. Take off overheads, tax etcetera and I’d be lucky to have made enough money to cover the cost of petrol back to Linlithgow, something that was no longer a chargeable outlay. Sometimes I felt I should register myself as a charity. To make things worse, before I could grab a bite to eat I’d also have to draft an appeal for my client and lodge it with the Sheriff Clerk. A top class, twenty-first century service for a third-rate, twentieth century fee.

  I quickly dashed off a note of appeal against sentence. I wasn’t wasting my time with an application for a stated case. There had been sufficient prosecution evidence to convict, and, not unusually, Sheriff Brechin had accepted it whole-heartedly. A twelve month sentence was, however, on the severe side. I charged along to the Clerk’s office, where I could see only one Depute hovering around in the vicinity of the public counter. I called him over and slipped the paperwork under the security glass.

  ‘You always were an optimist,’ he said, and then noticed the foot-note. ‘Oh, and an application for interim liberation too? I’m sure Sheriff Brechin won’t mind me interrupting his lunch to give that request his full consideration. Do you want to wait for the result?’

  I might have been an optimist but I wasn’t clinically insane. There’d be no interim lib today. My client would have to take his chances with the Appeal Court. I gathered gown and briefcase and set off in the direction of Munro & Co., whose offices were conveniently situated for Linlithgow Sheriff Court. That is until they’d moved the Sheriff Court to Livingston. Now I had a ten mile trip each way.

  But even the vindictiveness of Sheriff Albert Brechin couldn’t keep me in a bad mood. The sun was nearly shining, three rent-free months lay ahead and I had a tee-time booked for four o’clock. On the way back to work, I decided to drop into Sandy’s café for a crispy bacon roll just to keep my strength up.

  ‘Ciao, Robbie. Tuo padre è qui,’ Sandy called to me from behind the counter. There were one or two customers scattered about and he liked to keep up appearances at the establishment which, despite the signage, only the proprietor ever called, Bistro Alessandro.

  I looked around for my dad. A man usually not easy to miss.

  ‘He’s in the...’ Sandy’s Italian vocabulary was beginning to feel the strain.

  At that moment my dad walked out of the toilet. ‘The bagno,’ he told Sandy.

  I didn’t think so. I was fairly sure that bagno was bathroom, something Sandy’s basic plumbing facilities did not remotely constitute. ‘Is it not just toilette?’ I ventured.

  ‘That’s French, not Italian,’ said my dad and Sandy in unison.

  ‘No, he’s right enough,’ another customer spoke up in support of me. ‘It’s the same as the French except there’s no S at the end.’

  ‘Oy!’ Sandy shouted. ‘Who’s the bleeding Italian here?’ He turned to my dad. ‘Would you like anything to eat Mr Munro? Or did you just call in to inspect the bog and abuse my native tongue?’

  My dad gave him a friendly pat on the cheek and ordered a cup of tea and a roll on square sausage before sitting down at my table. ‘What’s this I’ve been hearing?’ he asked.

  ‘You hear a lot of things, Dad. You’ll have to narrow it down for me.’

  ‘About you buying engagement rings.’

  I didn’t even bother to ask who’d told him. Over thirty years as one of Lothian & Borders’ finest had left him with a network of spies; Grace-Mary chief among them.

  ‘A bit presumptuous of you isn’t it?’ he said, another expert in the female psyche. My dad leaned back in his chair as Sandy brought us our drinks. ‘What if she doesn’t like it? Jewellery. Women are terribly fussy about it. And shoes.’ He took a sip of tea. ‘In fact,’ he'd obviously given the matter some thought, ‘most things. What you going to do if she says no?’ He smiled at the thought.

  ‘Dad, this is strictly top secret. I’m not having Jill come back from Switzerland and being the only person in Linlithgow who doesn’t know I want to marry her.’

  ‘How is she, anyway? Have you heard?’

  ‘She flew out Thursday afternoon. She's lost her mobile, but phoned to say she'd landed safely. They've put her up in a really nice hotel and given her a guide to show her around, help her settle in.’

  The food arrived and my dad took a bite out of his roll. ‘How long’s she away for?’ he asked through a mouthful of bread and sausage.

  ‘Six weeks.’

  ‘That long?’

  ‘It’s this new job of hers. She’s going to be based in Edinburgh, but the head office is in Berne and she has to go there for training.’

  ‘Lot of rich blokes in the pharmaceutical business. Six weeks? You never know who she’ll meet over there.’

  Jill was the daughter of my dad’s best friend, the late Vincent Green, and I, so far as my dad had always been concerned, a subject not worthy of her attention. He disapproved of our getting together on the basis that my track record in affairs of the heart ranked somewhere between poor and hilarious and Jill deserved better. I let him dream on about rich, handsome Swiss men sweeping my girlfriend off her feet, while I checked the inside of my roll. The crispiness of the bacon was never in doubt, but Sandy was known to skimp on the brown sauce and occasionally to top up his HP sauce bottles with vinegar to make them go further.

  ‘Dad could you do me a favour?’ I asked when satisfied that my sauce quotient was up to scratch.

  He lowered his brow. ‘Possibly... Nothing to do with one of your clients is it?’

  ‘It’s Jill’s plants.’

  ‘What kind of plants?’

  ‘I don’t know... house plants.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They need watered.’

  ‘And you want me to go all the way through to Corstorphine for the sake of some flowers?’

  ‘I promised her. The bus practically goes past the door. You just need to get off a couple of stops before the Zoo and—’

  ‘I know where she lives.’ He sighed. ‘How do I get in?’

  ‘There’s a key. In the garden, at the side of the house, you’ll see a clay frog. The back door key is under it.’

  ‘Alarm?’

  ‘Inside the back door there’s a wee table with a plant on it. The doofer for the alarm is on a ledge underneath. You just press it once to disarm and once to arm when you leave.’

  My dad's roll was now a few stray crumbs on a white side-plate. ‘You having another?’ I asked, rhetorically.

  My dad glanced up at the clock on the wall, beneath which Sandy was standing at the counter, flicking through what looked suspiciously like an English/Italian dictionary. ‘What’s wrong you’re not at court? You’re usually flying about all over the place. Business slow or were you just pa
ssing and thought you’d drop in to delegate gardening duties?’

  ‘I had a case in Livingston but it’s finished. My new assistant is off dealing with other stuff for me.’ In the current climate, with booming crime but falling prosecutions, it had been a financial gamble to take on Joanna; even though I’d assumed it would be short term while she looked for another public sector job. That had been nearly six months ago. Since then she had settled into her role as defence agent, and the fact that I could now divide up my caseload meant that I was called upon less and less to perform my being-in-two-places-at-the-same-time routine. Whereas, I’d always harboured some concerns about the advocacy skills of my former assistant, Andy Imray, Joanna was a safe pair of hands. Those clients who moaned initially when told I couldn’t conduct their case, never complained when met by a tall, slim, attractive brunette who knew her way around a courtroom. It also meant that I could pull rank and side-step some of the stinkier trials.

  ‘I see your old assistant is doing all right for himself,’ my dad said, busy trying to attract Sandy’s attention by holding up his empty side plate and pointing at it. ‘He’s got that big case on the go just now in the High Court. Seen him on telly last night.’