Killer Contract (Best Defence series Book 4) Read online

  Andy swept a quiff of hair from his face and re-adjusted his designer frames. ‘Hello, Joanna,’ he said. ‘I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘I work here,’ she replied, turning a suspicious eye on me. ‘Don't I?’

  ‘Sorry, Andy,’ I said. ‘Did I not mention that Joanna had joined us?’

  ‘No... I don't think you did.’ Andy smiled and took Joanna's outstretched hand in his. ‘I miss all the gossip at court and I've been so busy with Larry Kirkslap's case.’

  Joanna gave him a smile. ‘Well done on that, by the way. Took some guts to say you'd spotted the mistake right at the beginning and not let on.’

  Andy blushed.

  I inhaled deeply. ‘What is that you're wearing, Andy? Joanna, give us a woman’s opinion.’ I ignored Grace-Mary’s throat clearing. ‘What do you think of Andy's aftershave?’

  ‘Aftershave?’

  ‘Yeah, I think I might invest in some myself.’

  I propelled her at Andy. She moved in close. A hand resting on his shoulder, she took a cautious little sniff. ‘Er... very nice,’ she said.

  Andy was now bright red to the roots of his dark hair below which a thin film of sweat had begun to bead.

  ‘What's it called?’ I asked, as Joanna stepped away.

  ‘Soap,’ Andy said, voice husky, eyes still fixed on Joanna.

  ‘They don't half think of the names these days, do they?’ I said. ‘Soap. Make a note of that will you, Grace-Mary? It's my birthday soon. Anyway, Joanna, Andy's here because I've offered him a job. He'd be helping you out with a few things. You'd both need to work closely as a team. Spend a lot of time together.’

  Andy gulped.

  ‘Unfortunately, Andy doesn't think it would work. He's a big city lawyer now and—’

  ‘Hold on there, Robbie. I didn’t say no. I am out of a job after all and... well... you know I have a great attachment to Linlithgow, to you and Grace-Mary.’ With some difficulty Andy tore his gaze from Joanna's lovely form, walked over to the window and stared out at Linlithgow High Street. ‘I'd love to come back and work here. It would be just like old times.’

  I slapped him on the back. It would be just like the same old salary too.

  Chapter 11

  ‘Nail-sick.’ My dad stepped off the last rung of the ladder and wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving streaks of black on tan corduroy. ‘Three hundred and sixty quid. That's how much I spent on a survey before I bought this place. No point taking any chances, I thought. I'm not going to trust the seller's home report, I'll have my own man take a look.’ He kicked the ladders and the top rails slid along the guttering. ‘He must have been blind. And you,’ he jabbed a finger at me. ‘If you were a real lawyer, doing proper legal work, you'd sue him for the cost of a new roof.’

  I grabbed the ladders before they slid off the side of the building. ‘Surveyors always have disclaimers on their reports,’ I told him. ‘It's those real lawyers who make them bullet-proof so that people like you can't sue them.’

  I laid the ladders down along the gable end of the cottage and followed him inside to the kitchen.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked.

  I wasn't planning on doing anything. I'd only come round after work to bring him his DIY materials and make sure he didn't take a header off the roof. Now that he'd realised his roof was going to need some professional attention and not just a roll of felt and a tin of sticky- black gloop, I could relax.

  ‘Well?’ My dad rummaged about in the cupboard under the sink.

  ‘Well what? I'm a lawyer. Not a real one, I know, but, still, I don't fix roofs for a living.’

  ‘I'm not talking about the roof. I'm talking about my birthday party. Where are you having it now? You can't have it here until I get the roof fixed, your flat's too wee and goodness knows where Malky's staying these days. I've not heard from your brother in weeks.’ He emerged from under the sink with a bottle of Oban. My dad's usual taste in whisky had temporarily migrated one hundred miles northeast from his beloved Islay. He took down a glass and poured himself a dram. ‘A wee bit fiery at first, but it grows on you.’ He put the cork back in the bottle. ‘You’re driving,’ he said. ‘The kettle’s over there.’

  There was a pile of unwashed dishes. I found a mug, rinsed it under the tap and was reaching for the kettle when my dad’s phone rang. It was Jill. She'd been away nearly two weeks and I was missing her like crazy.

  ‘How's it going?’ I asked.

  ‘Fine, apart from the fact that I still can't find my mobile. I've either lost it on the way over here or left it at home. I never realised how much I relied on it. I don’t have anybody’s number, just the one’s I can remember. You haven't come across it while you've been watering the plants have you?’

  I hadn't for reasons into which I thought it best not to delve too deeply. ‘How are you coping with the language?’

  ‘Okay, really. Everyone speaks German, though I can get by on English, or, if I have to, French. Josh has been a great help. He speaks, English, German, Italian, French and probably a few other languages. He's a downhiller racer. He nearly made it to the Winter Olympics once. As soon as I told him that I was a keen skier he was booking us in for a weekend at Zermatt.’

  ‘Zermatt?’

  ‘The resort on the glacier. There's snow up there all year round and Josh says—’

  ‘Josh?’

  A sigh that had started somewhere due north of the Alps, travelled a stretch of Western Europe and into my ear. ‘Do you never listen to me? I told you about him. He's kind of like my guide while I'm here.’

  Jill had said something about someone. As I recalled she'd referred to him as a human resources liaison officer, and I'd imagined a middle-aged guy in a lab-coat, ticking things off on a clipboard. There had been absolutely no mention of Olympian downhill-racers or trips to Alpine ski-resorts.

  ‘Anyway, got to go. I'm using a borrowed phone and Josh and some of the gang have arranged a fondue night. Cheese and chocolate,’ Jill giggled, ‘not mixed together. Separate. You'd love it. Say hi to your dad for me and I'll give you a call in a couple of days.’

  Please do, I thought, if it doesn't interrupt your skiing or ingestion of molten chocolate too much. Who was this guy, Josh? And how much was a flight to Switzerland?

  ‘Jill doing fine is she?’ my dad asked.

  ‘She says hi.’

  ‘What's with the face?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I splashed some fourteen-year-old single malt into the mug.

  ‘Told you.’ My dad took the mug from me and poured the contents into his glass. ‘What’s he called? Fritz? If it's Hans tell him to keep them to himself.’ He laughed alone, collapsing into a coughing fit that could only be cured by another wee half. ‘Germans. Troublemakers. Always have been.’

  ‘He's Swiss—’

  ‘Same thing,’ said my dad, robbing Switzerland of a thousand years of history. ‘Like nothing better than a good war.’

  ‘...and Switzerland haven't been in a war since... ages.’

  ‘They speak German and their banks are full of Nazi gold. Just because they're smart or cowards, or both, doesn't mean they're not troublemakers. Germans?’ he snorted. ‘They're as bad as the Irish. The Germans would start a fight in an empty house. Remember your great Uncle Pete? Remember what they did to him when he was a POW in Burma?’

  ‘That was the Japanese, Dad.’

  ‘Huns, Nips, it's all the same. They fought on the same side.’

  ‘He's called Josh, which is probably short for Joshua, so he could very well be Jewish.’

  My dad helped himself to his third dram in a row. ‘Sticking up for him now are you? I doubt if he'll need your help. If he's Jewish he could probably buy and sell the pair of us.’

  ‘All I'm saying is that if he is a Jew, and he may not be, I don't think he'd appreciate being referred to as a Hun or a Nazi. And what have you suddenly got against Jews? Your pal, Ben, short for Benjamin, is one. Where did you t
hink he got that nose?’ I didn't want to discuss it any more. I put the cork back in the bottle and replaced it under the sink next to the bleach and a packet of yellow scouring-pads. My dad had always kept his whisky there. When we were boys, Malky and I had been banned from going anywhere near the cupboard under the sink because that's where the poison was kept.

  But my dad wasn't quite finished; the big problem with the rest of the world being something of a specialist subject. ‘Let's face it,’ he said, raising his glass and studying the whisky as the light from the window caught the golden liquid. ‘The Jews aren't exactly innocent, are they? Or the Arabs. I mean, when it comes to bother, there's no-one does it like the Middle-East. Yeah, sure, Europe flares up now and again, mainly, like I say, because of the Krauts, but it's all over in a few years and everyone's friends again until the next time. The Jews and Arabs have been at it for thousands of years. Someone's really needing to have a serious word.’

  I wasn't sure why the United Nations bothered with the Road Map to Peace, when all they needed was ex-Sergeant Alex Munro, the Palestinian and Israeli leaders, a truncheon and a police interview room.

  ‘And Ben’s all right. He’s as Scottish as you or me.’

  ‘So, it doesn’t matter what race or religion a person is?’ I said. ‘Just so long as they’re Scottish?’

  ‘It’s not like that. I’ve known Ben for years. We’re playing dominos tomorrow night. Semi-final.’

  And that, I supposed, was the nub of it. Race, nationality and religion weren’t really the problem. It was the foreigners you didn’t know that were the problem.

  He ran hot water into the sink and added a squirt of washing-up liquid.

  ‘You don't have to take off your watch,’ I told him. It was an Omega Seamaster that Malky and I had bought him on his retirement. ‘It's water-proof to six hundred metres.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice, Jacques Cousteau. I'll wash, you dry, then you can give me a lift down the Red Corner. I'll need to find the name of someone to take a look at my roof.’

  ‘You can get the bus or a taxi back here, then,’ I said. ‘I'm not hanging about the pub while you and your cronies talk about slates.’

  ‘Away, it's not like I'm having a night on the tiles,’ he said to his own great amusement. ‘Give me your mobile and I'll call you at the house when I'm ready.’ He flicked my legs with a tea towel. ‘After all, it's not like you've got a date or anything.’ He threw the towel in my face. ‘Unlike your girlfriend.’

  Chapter 12

  In 1313, William Binnock of Ecclesmachan helped re-capture the then castle, not yet palace, of Linlithgow from the English. For his brave deeds, Robert the Bruce granted him lands to the east of the town that became known as the Binny Estate. It was upon this land that in 1872 a Mr Stewart, a naval captain, the latest in a line of feudal proprietors, had constructed a splendid mausoleum. Asked why he did so, when there was a Kirk churchyard nearby, he is said to have replied, ‘in the great day of resurrection, I wish to rise from my own property.'

  Fast forward one hundred and fifty years or so and upon this ancient and long sealed resting place, under cover of darkness and armed with various house-breaking implements, descended Nathan and Danny Boyd, brothers from the nearby village of Philipstoun. By the sounds of things they weren’t exactly Indiana Jones material. A farmer, noticing strange lights in the fields and suspecting badger-baiters, had summoned the police. The Boyd brothers were caught red-handed.

  Paul Sharp was waiting for me in the cafe at Livingston Civic Centre, twelve noon on Tuesday. We walked together across the grey flagstone vestibule to the wooden benches where sat my soon-to-be client, Danny Boyd. Paul introduced us, and after a consultation with my new client, his mother hovering in the background, I swiftly gathered that the boy wasn't the brightest. At sixteen years of age, Danny was the younger of the brothers by two years and second-named accused on the summary complaint, a copy of which was later served on each of them by a police officer once we'd climbed the flight of stairs to the Sheriff Court. Paul and I had a brief discussion about the two boys in the corridor outside Courtroom 4.

  ‘Nearest thing West Lothian has got to hillbillies,’ he said. ‘Someone else must have been using the Boyd brain cell that night. Both caught in the act, didn’t ask for lawyers when interviewed and made extremely helpful comments to the police upon arrest.’

  It looked like a straight guilty plea from both; however, where there are two accused, and to avoid a trial, the Procurator Fiscal would often take a guilty plea from one or other. In this case I thought we might persuade the PF to drop the charge against the younger of the two Boyd boys, if his brother pled.

  Even though it would do me out of a fee, I made that suggestion to Hugh Ogilvie, the PF. He wasn't interested.

  ‘I need both of them to plead,’ he said. ‘That pair are lucky not to be on petition. Violation of a sepulchre? They used to hang you for that.’

  But the shadow of the noose would not pass over either boy: not even shades of the prison house. Neither accused had a prior conviction, and so an order to perform unpaid work in the community seemed a certainty.

  I took young Danny's details and had him sign a legal aid form. Danny was a school-leaver, though, strictly speaking, you had to have gone to school in the first place before you could officially leave. Sixteen and unemployed, he had no income, capital or educational qualifications. His father was dead and the family income was derived from a small-holding that he and Nathan helped their mother to run, producing organic vegetables, eggs, home-baking and preserves for onward sale to local farm shops and garden centres. Though Danny was financially eligible for legal aid, I knew I'd still have a fight with the Scottish Legal Aid Board because there was no likelihood of loss of liberty or livelihood; the two main criteria that SLAB used to determine whether it was in the interests of justice to provide legal representation via the public purse. It wasn't uncommon to do the work and only later have SLAB tell you that you weren’t being paid for it. Better to plead not guilty and put the case off for a while. That way I could at least know if legal aid was going to be granted before I did the work, and, anyway, there was still a good chance that on a later date another, more reasonable, PF would accept Danny's not guilty plea.

  Sheriff Lawrence Dalrymple read the complaint, took the pleas of not guilty and studied the two lads in the dock over his half-moons. ‘We’ll fix an early trial diet in view of the age of your client, Mr Munro. They can both be bailed, standard conditions.’ Much to the dismay of the reporters, the court appearance was over in a minute or two and the wheels of justice turned in the direction of a boring-old drink-driver.

  Kaye Mitchell was waiting for me back at my office. ‘What a waste of time,’ she said. ‘How am I supposed to turn that into a story? Nothing happened!’

  She would just have to wait for the trial. Reporters hated that because a trial held the possibility of a not guilty verdict and an acquittal wasn't really much of a story. My phone rang. Grace-Mary patched Malky through to me.

  ‘What kind of whisky are you getting Dad for his birthday?’ he asked. ‘Last time I saw him he was banging on about Springbank eighteen-year-old being the greatest dram ever. Do you know how much it is for a bottle? Eighty quid!’ he said, before I could hazard a guess. ‘You could buy a house in Campbeltown for eighty quid. I was thinking we could go half—’

  ‘He doesn’t want whisky, this year.’ The phone went dead. ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘No, it sounded like you said he didn’t want whisky this year.’

  ‘He wants a birthday party, but it’s to be a surprise.’

  ‘And who’s going to organise that?’

  ‘You are,’ I said. ‘I’m snowed under at work just now.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘You think you’re the only one who’s snowed under?’

  Besides letting a Sunday newspaper use his by-line for a ghost-written sports column, Malk
y's worked involved chuntering on about football on a local radio phone-in for one hour, three nights a week. Occupationally, we weren’t talking avalanche-warning.

  ‘Come on, Malky. It’ll be easier if you organise it,’ I said. ‘Seeing how there’s a hole in Dad’s roof and we’re going to have to hold it at your place. Where is your place, by the way?’

  ‘I’m sort of between places. I’m staying with Jorge Kleinman just now.’

  ‘The one who played with you at Rangers?’ Jorge Kleinman had been the subject of more transfers than an Airfix Spitfire. He had to be loaded. His flat was probably the size of Ibrox Park, just with less of a mortgage.

  ‘How many Jorge Kleinmans do you know? Of course it’s that Jorge Kleinman.’

  ‘Good, because Dad was hoping some of your football chums would turn up. If we have it at Jorge’s place, it'll kill two birds with one stone. See if you can dig up some more has-beens.’

  ‘Least I never wuz a never-wuzzer,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever. Just remember: even although you and Jorge will be there, that won’t be enough balloons.’

  C hapter 13

  Gleann Iucha. The people of Linlithgow didn’t speak Gaelic. It was unlikely they ever had, even back in the day when a young Mary Queen of Scots was toddling about up at the Palace. Those folk from much further north and west who did speak Gaelic also spoke English; however, in case there was someone - a hermit living in a cave on a Western Isle, perhaps - who spoke only Gaelic, and, just in case that person ever decided to holiday on the mainland, the Scottish Government had kindly arranged for all Scotland’s railway stations to display the name of each town or city in both languages. To those at Holyrood, a lost teuchter on the Scotrail line was an unthinkable proposition.

  ‘You'll like Mike,’ Andy said, as, Wednesday afternoon, we stood on the Glasgow bound platform, me pondering the Gaelic signage and the size of my recently received Council Tax bill, my assistant staring down the track towards Edinburgh. ‘He's a good guy. Specialises in intellectual property rights and was in right at the beginning of P45 Apps along with Larry and Zack.