Duty Man (Best Defence series Book 2) Read online

  ‘That’s enough from you,’ I told him. ‘Nip back down to Sandy’s and get me an Americano.’

  Andy put down the basket and held out his hand. ‘Money?’

  ‘Tell Sandy to put it on my slate.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ Andy moaned. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

  I glanced down at the note. Chic Kelly phoning me for a visit? It had to be about his son. Someone else labouring under the illusion that I’d act for the youth charged with killing my childhood friend. It was something I didn’t want to dwell on. What I really wanted was a hair of the dog. There was a pub across the road. Linlithgow was full of them.

  ‘Never mind,’ I told Andy. ‘You keep on with your secretarial duties; I’ll get my own… coffee.’

  ‘You’ll not bother yourself,’ said Grace-Mary, her psychic powers as ever attune. She delved into the swear box, a glass jar filled with coins and about the only solvent asset in Munro & Co. ‘Here.’ She dropped some coins into my assistant’s out-stretched hand. ‘Don’t be long.’

  Andy was back in minutes. Presumably, Sandy’s was now a lot less chockers. ‘So are you going to keep Sean Kelly’s case?’ he asked, handing a cardboard cup to me.

  Grace-Mary was banging a letter out. ‘No he isn’t,’ she said, not looking away from the screen.

  ‘Then how come the defence post-mortem’s in the diary?’

  Grace-Mary stopped typing and gave me a look. ‘Robbie, you’re not?’

  I took a sip of coffee. ‘Someone’s got to do it.’

  ‘Then let someone else do it,’ she said.

  ‘Like who? I’m the duty agent. No-one’s going to volunteer to go to an autopsy.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Andy said. ‘I’ve never been to one before. Might be a good laugh.’

  My fists clenched and I could feel the blood drain from my face. The thought of seeing Max’s dissected body was bad enough but as a source of entertainment…

  Grace-Mary stepped in front of Andy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he complained. ‘I said I’d go didn’t I?’

  ‘You’re going nowhere.’ She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down into a chair. ‘You’re staying right here and helping me shift some filing cabinets.’

  CHAPTER 11

  There can’t be many worse ways to spend a Tuesday afternoon than watching the remains of a childhood friend being picked over like the Boxing Day turkey.

  When I’d set off for the autopsy I’d consoled myself with the thought that the sooner the defence post-mortem examination was carried out the sooner Max’s body could be released for burial and laid to rest. Now that I was actually there, standing outside the mortuary in the rain, I dreaded the thought of what was to come and almost wished I’d taken up my assistant’s offer. Volunteering for things didn’t feature strongly on Andy's CV. Ask him to see a new client and he complained, suggest that he come in early and open the mail and he’d like as not feign injury, but mention the chance of watching some poor sod being carved-up on a slab and suddenly he was your man. I knew why: post mortems are a source of excitement to young lawyers, something to boast about in the pub to their mates. The novelty soon wears off. One or two messy autopsies down the road and your average legal-trainee starts to seriously consider a career in conveyancing.

  I tried the mortuary door. It was locked. I wasn’t sure why. No one was likely to escape and who in their right mind would want to break in?

  I found shelter from the rain and, as I huddled in the doorway, my mind raced back to Mrs Clark’s primary three class, where a seven-year-old Robbie Munro was trying to smother a balloon with a congealed mass of paper and glue in the hope that it would miraculously assemble itself into a paper-maché piggy bank. Miracles were in short supply that day and I was ready to splat the whole thing against a wall when the new boy came over, all short back and sides, puppy fat and sticky out ears. He’d somehow rescued operation piggy bank, and I’d been so pleased it didn’t even matter when on Father’s Day my Dad had wondered what he was supposed to do with a misshapen pink football.

  After that Max and I became something of a team. We walked to school together, went to the swing-park together. Max helped me with homework and I dealt mercilessly with the bullies out to steal his packed lunch.

  Because Max’s father was dead and mine very much alive and a widower, a large part of our formative years was spent trying to devise intricate and, no doubt, highly transparent schemes to throw our respective parents together in the off-chance that romantic entanglement and marriage would one day ensue. By the time Max’s mum eventually did remarry (a shopfitter from Bishopbriggs) we had more or less given up the whole idea for a dead loss.

  I’d never been sure just who’d thought first about a career in the law, but, whoever it was, the other had also thought it an excellent idea and we’d both gone off to University where Max came to the rescue once more with his copperplate lecture notes and insight into the impenetrable mysteries of constitutional law.

  A drip of cold water from the door frame precision-bombed the back of my neck, shocking me into a return to the present day and the sight of a man clad in brown overalls, green wellies and carrying an umbrella advertising a local undertaker.

  ‘Dying to get in?’ the mortuary assistant chuckled, as he dug deep in his overalls and produced a bunch of keys with which he let me out of the rain and into his sweetly pungent world of decaying flesh and pine disinfectant. ‘You here for Abercrombie?’ He laid a hand on my shoulder, a doleful expression on his chubby little face. ‘I’ve bad news – he’s dead.’

  I wrestled the desire to rip off one of his green wellies and wrap it round his grinning chops. Eventually his laughter deteriorated into a chesty wheeze and I calmed myself, remembering why I was there and who was lying in a chilled drawer in the next room.

  ‘I’m expecting Professor Bradley,’ I said.

  ‘I know. The Crown’s been here already. You’d think one hatchet job would be enough. I’d feel sorry for the poor bugger if he wasn’t dead already.’

  My hands were being drawn uncontrollably towards the green wellies when onto the scene entered Detective Inspector Dougie Fleming wearing what in the opinion of Lothian and Borders Police passed for plain clothes. I didn’t suppose his mother owned any bonnie baby rosettes, but I noticed he was looking even rougher than usual. His lip was split and a row of butterfly stitches held together a cut above his left eye; souvenirs, I imagined, of his scrap with my drunken Lithuanian client in the curry house. What was his name again? Salavejus? Whoever he was, he and I had a day in court with DI Fleming to look forward to.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Munro,’ Fleming said, like he didn’t mean it. He gestured to the doorway. ‘Allow me to introduce Detective Chief Inspector Lockhart.’

  I was expecting an older, perhaps better-groomed, version of Dougie Fleming. What stepped into the room was a tall, athletic female in a tan raincoat. She seemed very young to have achieved such a high rank.

  ‘Petra Lockhart.’ She smiled and shook my hand. ‘Hope you don’t mind. The Fiscal suggested we come along and keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Plod.’ The mortuary assistant sized up Fleming. ‘Saw you lurking around the hospital canteen earlier. I’ve never seen pies disappear like they do when you lot are around.’

  ‘Aye, and it would take a detective to find the meat in them.’ Fleming said, reaching into his pocket and taking out a pack of smokes.

  ‘You’ll need to go outside if you want to do that.’ The mortuary assistant gave Fleming a scalpel slash of a smile ‘It’s the law.’

  Fleming glanced at his senior officer. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘If you really have to.’

  On his way out, Fleming dodged the figure of Professor Edward Bradley bustling his way in. ‘Robbie, how are things?’ Not waiting for an answer, the pathologist tore off his overcoat, gave it a shake and draped it over a radiator. ‘In a bit of a rush I’m afraid – got a suspicious death in Dumfries at f
ive.’

  If he had to be quick, I wasn’t going to object. As far as I was concerned the sooner I was out of there the better.

  The assistant helped the Professor into a lab coat before wheeling through a trolley draped in white. Without ceremony he whipped back the sheet to reveal the dissected body of Max Abercrombie.

  ‘I see that the Crown team’s already been here,’ Prof. Bradley said. ‘Don’t tell me, Ken Crichton, right? Couldn’t carve a roast. Anyway, here goes. Switch the tape on, Jim.’

  ‘It is on,’ said the mortuary assistant.

  ‘Ah. Then let’s get started shall we?’ The Professor pulled back a section of chest skin complete with creamy layer of adipose tissue, thus affording himself access to the thoracic cavity. He held out a hand and the assistant put a probe in it. ‘This is the body of a male adult...’

  I couldn’t watch.

  ‘Not got the stomach for it?’ Fleming gloated when he saw me stepping out of the front door to join him in the drizzle. He blew out a lungful of smoke. ‘How’s your dad? The Force lost a good man the day he retired.’

  ‘So he never stops telling me.’ I wasn’t one to fraternise with the enemy, but even standing in the rain, inhaling Fleming’s second hand smoke, was better than witnessing the events going on inside. I’d stay there until the whole nasty business was finished and catch a word with the Professor rather than wait for his written report. ‘What’s with your glamorous buddy?’ I asked Fleming, in an effort to talk about something other than why we were there.

  ‘Bit tasty eh?’

  ‘Haven’t seen her around before.’

  ‘High-flyer on loan from Fettes.’

  ‘Slumming it?’

  ‘Don’t let the looks and the posh accent fool you.’ Fleming tipped the ash off his cigarette. ‘Lockhart’s from East Pilton or Drylaw or somewhere scummy like that. Somewhere the weans play tig with hatchets. Her dad was a cop too, a grunt, community officer or something; at least he was until there arose the small matter of shady goings on with certain licence applications.’

  ‘What kind of licences?’ I asked, glad for a bit of gossip to take my mind off what was happening through the wall from me.

  ‘Pubs, clubs, extended hours. Lockhart’s old boy used to do the police reports for the Licensing Board. The bigger the bung the better the report. He was careless. It couldn’t go unnoticed forever. Eventually, he took the honourable way out with a tow-rope and the next door neighbour’s apple tree.’

  I winced. ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Didn’t put Lockhart off though. She’d already joined the Force at eighteen and went on to make sergeant at twenty-three. After that it was onto Uni and a proper law degree.’ He said it as though I’d snipped my degree out the back of a cornflakes box and coloured it in with some crayons.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about her.’

  ‘Everyone knows a lot about Petra Lockhart. She’s not what you’d call publicity shy.’ He took another few rapid puffs, the red hot tip growing longer with each drag, curving downwards. ‘I bend the rules and get my knuckles rapped. She breaks them and somebody gives her a bloody medal. Thinks she knows it all and doesn’t mind telling the rest of us how to do our jobs.’ Fleming drew hard and blew smoke down his nose. ‘Probably end up making Chief Constable – stuck-up bint.’

  Anyone Fleming disliked couldn’t be all bad. I was just glad they had someone good on Max’s case.

  After a couple more puffs, Fleming pinged the half-smoked cigarette away and went back inside. I followed him as far as the corridor outside the examination room where I paced up and down until the sound of surgical implements clattering into a stainless steel bowl told me the ordeal was almost over. I went back inside.

  ‘That should do it,’ the Professor said, ripping off a pair of bloody latex gloves and dropping them into a nearby waste bucket. The comedian in the green wellies scurried around, tidying up. Once he’d replaced the white sheet and wheeled the trolley away he fetched the Professor’s coat.

  ‘You’ll have my report in two or three days, toxicology will take longer,’ said the pathologist. ‘Still, I don’t suppose the findings will differ much from the Crown’s. Used to mentor Ken Crichton, you know. The boy would give butchery a bad name, but he’s usually pretty thorough.’

  I walked the Professor to his car and let him do all the talking.

  ‘There are some superficial signs of a struggle: a few scratch marks, though really nothing much in the way of blunt trauma. Cause of death: two gunshot wounds to the thorax with associated damage to the internal structures, lungs, heart, major blood vessels, result: massive blood loss, hypovolemic shock and multiple organ failure. From the angle of the wounds and the deceased’s height I’d say he was standing when he was shot. May have been bearing down on his attacker. One bullet passed through the right hand before it entered the chest so must have been fired at fairly close range. The other fragmented into two pieces, the bigger piece slicing through the left internal thoracic artery and lodging in the rear fifth thoracic vertebra.’

  He placed his tool bag on the back seat of the car.

  ‘Weapon?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d guess at a thirty-eight, something like that.’

  The Professor wasn’t exactly going out on a limb; the underworld was swimming in ex-military hardware. A thirty-eight was a noisy beast. Not that it would have mattered. Max’s office was at the rear of an old sandstone building with walls that were feet thick. You could have let off a twenty-one gun salute in there without disturbing the neighbours.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a professional hit,’ I said.

  ‘No, definitely amateur-hour. To do it properly you’d go for a two-two. They’re quiet and it’s not hard to get hold of a pre-Dunblane target pistol. A double tap to the base of the skull, using soft nosed rounds on a low charge - no exit wounds and minimal blood spray - just a couple of slugs ricocheting around inside the skull doing maximum damage in a clean, quiet and efficient way. Of course that’s assuming you can take your victim by surprise. Otherwise you probably would need a cannon to stop someone the size of... Sorry, Robbie. Got a bit carried away there.’ He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘It would have been quick.’ It was scant consolation. It made me feel sick to think of Max confronting his attacker, reaching out, trying to grab the gun, fighting for his life and being shot at point blank range.

  The Professor lowered himself into the driver’s seat of his geriatric Volvo estate. ‘Robbie, why are you even here? You’re too close to this.’

  A strangled, ‘I’m duty agent. It’s my duty,’ was the best I could come up with.

  ‘Well this case is above and beyond the call. Get rid of it.’ He slammed the door shut, the engine roared into life and in a moment and a cloud of exhaust he was gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  Jay Deez was busy. Every chair taken, every stylist hard at it with brushes, tongs, scissors and spray. I’d hardly been in the place and already one of the junior stylists had washed and conditioned my hair, massaged my scalp and was now leading me, damp towel around my shoulders, from the sink area to the styling floor. It was a far cry from the gauge three, sides, back and over the top that kept my usual barber occupied for about five minutes. My hair wasn’t used to this high level of attention and I was beginning to feel decidedly uneasy when Butch appeared by my side. He sat me down, pushed some cans of hairspray, a styling comb and a pile of celebrity mags to one side and placed a cup of filter coffee on the ledge in front of me. Ferns of steam crept up the big mirror.

  ‘What do you think of the monstrosity?’ he asked, whisking away the towel and wrapping a protective gown about me, tying it securely at my neck. He tilted his head at the vast and varied array of paperweights on display in a small alcove in the corner of the salon. The three glass shelves on which the paperweights were distributed were lit from beneath by a row of spotlights recessed in the work surface. ‘Jacqui had it put in the other week there. Needed somewhere to k
eep her collection. Suppose she had to do something. The bloody things were starting to breed.’ He rubbed my wet hair between his podgy fingers and studied it thoughtfully for a moment or two, lips pursed. ‘Paperweights,’ he blurted, letting go my hair. ‘All my fault.’ Butch flicked his own hair to either side of his head. ‘I should never have brought back that crystal maple leaf the year I went to Canada. Jacqui had to go one better and buy that big ugly thing.’

  He was referring, I guessed, to what was the centre piece of the display: a large glass globe with a rainbow swirl and a blizzard of bubbles caught inside.

  Butch brushed his hair back again with the back of each hand. ‘After that it just snow-balled. Now no-one has to think about what to get the guys at Jay Deez for a present. Isn’t that right girls?’ he shouted at his colleagues over the noise of blasting hair-driers. Not one of them looked around from what they were doing but their heads nodded in unison. ‘Nae boxes of chocs for us. Oh no, dead simple. If you want to get that lot down at Jay Deez a prezzie,’ he spoke the name of the salon like a curse, ‘just get them a lump of glass.’ He ruffled my hair. ‘Sad thing is Jacqui actually likes them.’ He raised his voice again. ‘And what the boss likes, the boss gets, isn’t that right girls?’ The same heads nodded again in some kind of Pavlovian reflex. Butch lifted up some more of my hair and looked at my reflection. ‘What were you thinking?’ he asked, head tilted to one side. ‘Go crazy, I might give you a discount.’

  ‘Just a trim’s fine.’

  Butch’s fat features registered confusion, as though I’d asked for a procedure with which he was unfamiliar. ‘A what?’

  I took a sip of coffee. ‘Jacqui not in today?’

  Butch folded his arms and scowled at me in the mirror. ‘Is that a problem?’

  It was most certainly a problem. For one thing I was expecting a freebie and wasn’t sure how well Butch would take to that suggestion, but in answer to his question I shrugged non-commitally and said, ‘no, not really.’