The only occupant of the agents’ robing room when I walked in was a newspaper on legs. The newspaper lowered and I saw one of the older members of the local Faculty, now retired. I didn’t know his first name. I assumed he had one but no-one ever called him by it. He was always Mr Stirling a crusty old guy who dropped into court now and again and spent his time in the robing room, reading the newspaper, gossiping, drinking cups of tea that other people bought him and berating the Scottish Government, irrespective of which political party happened to be in power. I liked him.
‘I hear you’re out of the case, Munro,’ he said. ‘Quite right, Max Abercrombie was a good lad, a safe pair of hands. If you’re like me you’ll be glad to see that little shit downstairs jailed for the rest of his natural. He snorted. Except thanks to those in charge of our so-called criminal justice system he’ll probably say, ‘oops, sorry’, do twelve years and get out on one of those tag things.’ He raised his newspaper again. ‘Just be grateful that with Barbie the bubblehead for his lawyer, he’s not going to walk away from this.’
Moments later Lorna Wylie rushed into the room and over to one of the big sash and case windows She had on a steel grey suit, white silk blouse with a black velvet cross-over neck-piece, held in place by a diamond stud. She looked out at the scene below in the courtyard then turned to me, her face aglow beneath the layers of make-up.
‘Do you see that crowd?’ she asked, breathlessly. ‘I’m waiting for the cameras to arrive before I make an appearance.’ She glanced down at herself, smoothed her hands over her thin frame and held them out at her sides.
‘How do I look? Those TV cameras put pounds on you.’ She looked at me. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Is my lipstick smudged? Since they put those ultra-violet light bulbs in the toilets to stop the junkies finding a vein, making-up in the ladies is a no-go - unless you want to come out looking like Coco the Clown’s big sister.’
‘No, you’re fine,’ I assured her. There was no easy way of saying it. ‘Lorna, I want to keep acting for Sean Kelly.’
‘Forget it.’ Lorna took a press-powder compact from her handbag and checked her lippy in the mirror just in case I’d been lying. She smacked her lips together. ‘He’s mine.’
‘Why don’t we ask him who he wants?’ I suggested.
‘Nope.’ Lorna snapped the compact shut and took another glance out of the window. ‘I’ve checked with the cells. Reliance says you’re no longer acting and as he hasn’t asked for anyone else they’ve got him down on the sheet as one for the duty agent. Which means me. You’ve had your chance.’ She smiled smugly, climbed into her crisply-starched court gown and flounced out of the room.
Chapter 20
Most of those sitting at the long trestle tables were giving their undivided attention to the bowls of soup and hunks of bread being laid out in front of them. I pulled up a seat at the end of a row of jaikies, junkies and a German tourist who’d been rolled on Rose Street and couldn’t remember who he was, where he was or who’d won the war.
Frankie McPhee came out of the kitchen carrying an enormous pot between two paisley-patterned oven gloves. He placed it on a steel trolley and commenced to dish out steaming ladles of broth. When he caught sight of me, he trundled over with the trolley. ‘What brings you through to Auld Reekie?’ he asked.
‘Sean Kelly. I’ve been thinking and I might be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt – for the moment.’
Frankie looked pleased. ‘Let me finish dishing up and we’ll talk.’ He poured me out a ladle of soup. ‘Try this. It’s my mother’s recipe.’
I took a taste and wondered how the man had survived childhood. Frankie and his ladle moved off. I set down my spoon.
‘You not wantin’ yours?’ asked the man sitting next to me.
I wasn’t sure which smelled worse, him or the soup. I raised my hands. He pulled the bowl over and got stuck in - years of Special Brew and Dettol cocktails could do that to your tastebuds.
I went through to the kitchen. It was well equipped with a huge gas hob and oven, rows of shiny cooking utensils, pots and pans hanging along the walls and one immense vegetable rack holding heaps of potatoes, carrots and turnips. Over at the table in the middle of the room someone was stacking bowls: Big Jo-Jo Johnstone. I guessed no-one ever complained about the service.
Soon, Frankie came in and parked his soup trolley. Without a word he led me through a fire exit and we walked together in the grounds of the old church, through a graveyard overgrown with brambles and purple terrors where a dilapidated stob and wire fence marked an uncertain boundary. Beyond lay an area of waste ground stretching as far as the Edinburgh to Glasgow railway line. We stopped and looked back.
‘I’m going to knock the place flat,’ Frankie said, breathing clouds of white into the cold night air.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d be into knocking down churches,’ I said.
‘The Church is the people, not the building. These old Victorian monstrosities would put anyone off Christianity.’
He did have a point. The moment I’d walked into the place I’d been reminded of end of term services, boring sermons, out-dated hymns and getting a clip round the ear-hole for crunching POLO mints. ‘And after you’ve demolished it?’
‘I’ll build a new place. Bright and welcoming. Fill it with art and music. Make it a public attraction open twenty-four/seven. People will want to come in just to look around, be part of it, and all will be welcome.’ Frankie was warming to his theme. ‘There’ll be a hostel for the homeless, drug and alcohol counselling, sports facilities, healing rooms. I’ll bring Christ to the community.’
‘It all sounds very commendable. Very expensive.’
‘The Lord will provide.’
‘You seem very sure about that.’
‘Knock and it shall be opened unto you, seek and you shall find, ask and it shall be given unto you—’
‘Especially if you have a stocking over your head and a sawn-off in your hand.’
Frankie gave me a weary smile. ‘I made a lot of money in my previous life and I’ve still some of it left.’
‘I suppose it helps having never paid tax,’ I said. ‘Whatever happened to ‘render unto Caesar’?’
Frankie’s look of discomfort lasted only for a moment. ‘Caesar would only spend it on another war.’ He kicked a loose stone into the undergrowth. ‘Sean Kelly. Why the change of mind?’
‘I haven’t changed my mind. I’m just not so sure now.’
‘And what are you going to do about it?’
‘I want to meet with him, hear his side of things.’
‘I’m glad. But why are you telling me? Is it about money?’
‘I’m no longer acting for Sean so I can’t book an agent’s visit to see him. I was wondering if you were going to see him anytime soon. I might tag along.’
A light rain had started to fall. Strands of hair stuck to Frankie’s forehead and he slicked them back with his hand. ‘I’ve an evening visit booked for tomorrow at seven fifteen. We’ll need to check in by seven at the latest. If you like, I’ll meet you at your office around half six.’
‘I’m not promising anything...’
‘I know that,’ he said, ‘but, believe me, you're doing the right thing.’
Chapter 21
HM Prison Polmont became a Young Offenders’ Institution as part of the 1983 prison reforms but the locals still refer to it with fondness as ‘The Borstal’. It’s the biggest prison in Scotland, housing the vast majority of young prisoners, and was where Sean Kelly awaited trial for the murder of Max Abercrombie.
‘So,’ I said, as I drove down the steep hill through the village of Maddiston. ‘Sean Kelly’s mum - an old flame?’
Frankie screwed up his face. ‘More of a burnt-out cinder, really. Of course, I know Betty’s husband from the old days. Chic worked for me now and again. What a thief, by the way. He could steal the sugar out of your tea. There was nobody like him.’
‘No-one li
ke him for getting caught afterwards, either.’
Frankie could only agree. ‘Aye, it was a nightmare trying to keep him off the bevvy and out of the bookies. Anyway when I bumped into Betty and heard about Sean I said I’d do what I could to help out.’
In days gone by, a ‘help out’ would have involved paying the Crown witnesses a visit. Frankie was sheer magic at that. One word from him and, hey presto, instant amnesia.
Intimidation was Frankie’s stock in trade. In the beginning, his main sources of income had been money-lending, the occasional spot of armed robbery and, chiefly, a portfolio of clients, mainly pubs and clubs, to whom he provided a protection service. Some establishments were happy to pay to have Frankie show face, his very presence letting the punters know it wasn’t a place to be getting rowdy or anti-social with the management. Others were not so keen, but they all paid. It was simply a commercial outlay, like plate glass cover or life insurance. In fact it was both. Later, Frankie acquired a number of drinking establishments of his own, many at knockdown prices. He could have delegated the running of these businesses to others and enjoyed the good life. He didn’t and it was his hands-on approach to business that was to prove Frankie’s downfall; that and the CCTV that caught him extracting payment from the nose of a late-payer.
The video evidence was so good that when his case came to court it hadn’t been much of a trial, more of a movie premiere with the Sheriff a disgruntled critic. Duly convicted, Frankie checked into Barlinnie for a three-month vacation courtesy of the Queen. It was a stay in jail that with remission should have lasted six weeks; instead he’d served six years.
I brought the car to a halt at a set of traffic lights and took a sideways glance at the man sitting next to me. His strong facial features had softened over the years but I wasn’t convinced that prison had changed any more than his outward appearance. I asked him about his time inside and his face lit up as he recounted the gospel according to Saint Francis of Saughton.
It had been the end of another day. Another twenty-four hours chalked on the prison wall of life. Frankie lay on his bunk, bereft of cigarette papers and choking for a smoke. That was when he’d noticed the little New Testament lying in the corner of the cell. It had a red, fake-leather cover, tattered and worn, and, by the number of missing pages, Frankie wasn’t the first guest to have run out of Rizlas.
Frankie tore out a page and laid on a pinch of tobacco. Then it happened, or so he said. Conversion. Not exactly a blinding light on the road to Damascus though just as effective. The page he had ripped out contained John 3 verse 16, a passage even I knew, vaguely. Frankie reminded me:
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whomsoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Me! That night I read what was left of that wee book and in the morning I awoke a new creation.’
I’d heard the rest of the story six years previously. Frankie’s new found faith had been greeted by the other inmates with due respect. He was Frankie McPhee after all and had to have an angle; it was just that no one could figure out what it was.
Enter Danny Gilzean, a big fat man with a florid face that proclaimed a fondness for the wine of Scotland. Prison was his second home and frequent incarcerations let his wife’s bruises heal and her bones knit.
Gilzean checked into Barlinnie on an unpaid fine the week Frankie was due to finish his short stay. Through sheer ignorance of who he was dealing with and intrigued by Frankie’s alleged spiritual transformation, the fat man subjected Frankie to a torrent of abuse and blasphemy as part of some kind of inquisition.
One day, following what was diplomatically referred to in court as ‘a frank exchange of views’ , Gilzean struck Frankie across the side of the face. The fat man, it seemed, had gleaned a knowledge of scripture from somewhere. ‘Now let’s see you turn the other cheek.’
Gilzean’s fatal mistake was to grossly over-estimate Frankie’s theological depth.
Frankie turned to me and smiled sadly. ‘Turn the other cheek? I had no idea what the man was talking about.’
The New Testament in the pocket of Frankie’s prison trousers began at John’s Gospel Chapter 3. The Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes along with half an ounce of Golden Virginia, had gone up in holy smoke long before.
There was a punch, Gilzean’s head hit the ground like a meteorite and one less place was set for dinner that night. Around the same time a couple of distillery workers were laid off and an unhealthy wife became a healthy widow.
And that’s where I came in. The Crown, as it did in all but the most clear-cut of cases, offered a plea of culpable homicide leaving Frankie with two choices: take the deal or toss a coin with the jury. Heads it’s an acquittal, tails it’s a mandatory life sentence. Frankie took the deal and was handed down a nine-year sentence, six with full remission. It was better than life but a bit steep given the mitigating circumstances. I suspected the judge had received a word from the Lord – the Lord Advocate.
‘I always said you should have taken it to trial and pled self-defence.’
Frankie shook his head. ‘I pled guilty because I was disgusted with myself. I’d been a Christian for barely a month and I had taken the life of another human being.’
I supposed Danny Gilzean could be classified as a human being – if the term were applied loosely enough.
I took a left turn and drove down a long, winding driveway, traversing a mountain range of speed bumps towards the splendid new façade of YOI. Prison building: one of Scotland’s few boom industries.
‘They say it’s all flat screen TV’s and X-Boxes,’ Frankie said. ‘Easy time.’ He took his eyes off the great white building at the end of the road. ‘Trust me there’s no such a thing.’
‘And why should it be?’ I asked. ‘You think it’s easy for Irene Abercrombie and her kids.’
‘The boy’s innocent.’
‘So you keep saying.’ I parked the car. ‘But I’d like to look into his eyes and have him tell me that himself.’
Chapter 22
The door to the visit room opened and a prison officer installed Sean Kelly in a chair with his back to the far wall. Scottish Prison Service guidelines stated that all visitors must occupy the seats nearest the door, presumably in case the guests were in need of a sharp exit. I didn’t think we were in much danger from young Sean. Perhaps Max Abercrombie had thought the same.
We should have been meeting in the open visit area but the screw who took us through recognised me and, assuming I was there on official business, let us use one of the agents’ rooms across the way.
The prisoner stared at me and then at Frankie. ‘What’s he doing here?’
Frankie set his big black Bible on the table and took a paper bag from his pocket. Strictly speaking it was a breach of Her Majesty’s Prison regulations to give items, even pan-drops, to prisoners, but if that was the extent of Frankie’s offending these days I was confident the Queen wouldn’t make a fuss. He held out the bag and gave it a shake. The young man took one. Frankie shook it again.
‘Have another - for Ron.’
‘Who?’
‘He means later-Ron,’ I said. ‘It’s like a joke only not as funny.’
The young man’s face threatened to crease, the muscles in his face fighting for control as though if he smiled he’d burst into tears. He helped himself to another sweet.
‘Sean,’ Frankie said, ‘you’re charged with murder and you need a lawyer.’
‘I’ve got a lawyer. Miss Wylie.’
‘Yes, but you need a good lawyer. You need Robbie Munro.’
‘Yeah? Well he doesn’t want me. At least Miss Wylie wants to help.’
I pulled the bag of sweets across the table. ‘You can have Miss Wylie.’ I took a pan-drop and popped it into my mouth. ‘In fact, if you killed Max Abercrombie, I’d rather you stuck with her. But if you’re innocent - I’ll see to it that you’re acquitted and I’ll nail the real culprit, or die trying.’
‘Lis
ten to the man, Sean,’ Frankie said. ‘Robbie Munro never let me down.’
It was good of him to say so. Although I’d acted for many of his associates or henchman, call them what you will, I’d only represented Frankie on a handful of occasions and two of those had resulted in conviction and his only two prison sentences.
The prisoner returned his gaze again to Frankie’s big black Bible. ‘I suppose if Mr McPhee says you're okay…’
I leaned across the table at the prisoner. ‘Before we go any further, I have to hear from your own lips that you didn’t do this thing.’ It was something I’d never asked a client before. Normally, guilt or innocence didn’t come into it; such matters were for the jury. I was far more interested in sniffing out reasonable doubts, but then I’d never before had a client charged with killing a friend of mine.
The prisoner said nothing. He just sat there, head bowed, staring at Frankie’s Bible and sucking his sweet.
‘Okay, for a kick-off why don’t you tell me where you were on the evening of the murder. ‘Nothing.’ Did you know Max Abercrombie? Did you have business with him?’ Not a cheep.
Frankie leaned forward, hands clasped, knuckles white. ‘Listen, Sean, you’ve got to talk to Mr Munro. Help him to help you.’
The prisoner thought things over for a moment or two. ‘Robbie Munro, Lorna Wylie. What’s the difference? The cops have nothing on me. No-one can prove I killed anyone, so why do I even need a lawyer?’
Frankie leapt to his feet and both hands on the table top leaned across at the prisoner. ‘Wise up, son. Believe me, if the cops say you’re het and if you don’t face up to that pretty pronto you’re going to spend the best years of your life eating sausage and beans with a plastic fork.’
He was right. People thought the police investigated a case until they found the culprit. In reality they found a culprit and prepared a case around him. Detective Chief Inspector Petra Lockhart might be keeping an open mind about the investigation: Dougie Fleming had designated Sean Kelly as the murderer and wouldn’t be going out of his way in the search for other possible suspects. Much easier for him to cut the cloth that he had to the right size than go looking for new material.
Duty Man (Best Defence series Book 2) Page 7
