Duty Man (Best Defence series Book 2)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  Chapter 32

  Brendan’s study was a complete clutter. Compared to it, my untidy office was a minimalist’s paradise. There were crates of empties stacked along one wall, jostling for space with an army of mops, brushes and pails. Kegs of beer and boxes of crisps were piled high all over and in a corner lay the mortal remains of an industrial-sized deep fat fryer. Even the wall space was congested, plastered with paper-clippings and old boxing posters, mostly featuring His Truly.

  Brendan went over to a small roll-top desk overflowing with paperwork. He tipped a grey cat from the only chair in the room and sat down. I leaned against a filing cabinet. Its thick brown enamel paint chipped and scored. On top was a pile of magazines: The Ring, Boxing Monthly, and so on, and balancing precariously on top of those: a black and white portable TV with a coat-hanger aerial, showing an early afternoon soap.

  ‘Sorry, about the mess,’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing my accounts.’

  ‘Remember and send the tax man the right set.’

  Brendan furrowed his brow, slipping my dig like a weak left jab. ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’ I detected a note of suspicion in his voice. ‘I don’t see you in here much.’

  ‘Just passing. How you been keeping?’

  ‘Ach, not bad. I’m off on holiday next week. Lanzarote, all inclusive. In fact you’ve come at a good time.’ He rummaged about the desk and from under a pile of invoices and V.A.T. returns retrieved a passport application form. ‘You can sign this for me while you’re here.’

  All those years at law school hadn’t been wasted after all.

  ‘Got a black pen on you?’

  I hadn’t.

  ‘Saw you at the funeral,’ I said, as Brendan patted himself down. ‘You and Max still kept in touch, then?’

  He pulled open a series of drawers. ‘Now and again. You know how it is. In fact we were out on the town not long before he was killed.’ He found a small red bookie’s pen in a bottom drawer. ‘I got tickets for the St Andrews Sporting Club: Scotland/Ireland. Some handy boys on show.’

  Max had boxed in his younger days. It had been his mother’s idea because her son, who’d always been tall for his age and a target for bullies, needed toughening up. Max had been such a quiet, gentle soul that he’d hated the idea, but, to everyone’s surprise, had grown to enjoy the sport and from the day her boy had come home with his first black-eye, Mrs Abercrombie had wished she’d never opened her mouth.

  ‘Max was still keen?’

  ‘On the boxing? Oh aye, he liked to know who was up-and-coming. It was a good night. The girls enjoyed themselves. We all did.’

  I had met Brendan’s other half, Angie O’Hara: a body from Baywatch, a face from Crimewatch. She was all matt black hair, fake tan and more cheap bling than the Argos catalogue. The sort of girl you’d find in a boxing crowd, knocking back a rum and coke and baying for blood. But Irene Abercrombie? I didn’t think so. Irene’s idea of a good night out would not include a scoop with the lads and being sprayed with blood from a right-cross. No, Irene was definitely more a string quartet with a Kir Royale at the interval.

  ‘Girls?’

  Brendan bent over the desk and scribbled blue ink on the back of an envelope. When he stood up straight again his face was flushed and he had a lopsided grin. ‘Nothing serious. Just a bit of fun.’

  ‘Anyone I’d know?’

  Brendan flashed a smile. ‘What goes on tour...’

  I left that particular line of enquiry alone for the time being at any rate. ‘Was he any good?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Max. Boxing. Was he any good?’

  ‘Good enough - for the amateur ranks, but, no, not good-good.’ Brendan stooped to continue his search in the bottom drawer. ‘At least he knew it and stuck in at the school. Not like me.’

  From what I remembered of Brendan’s academic abilities at primary school, getting his head punched in for a living was as good a use for it as any.

  ‘You’ve done all right. Brendan Patterson, ‘The Linlithgow Lion’. We were all dead proud of you. They don’t give away gold medals with every ten litres of unleaded.’

  ‘The Commonwealth Games,’ Brendan scoffed. ‘I beat up a Canadian, a Kiwi and some witch doctor from Bongoland who couldn’t box eggs. It wasn’t until I turned pro that I found out what the fight game was really all about. That’s when I learned I didn’t have what it took to be champ. I had the guts but not the guile.’

  ‘You were our hero. Harry Carpenter interviewed you on telly once.’

  Brendan shrugged. ‘I was a journeyman. That’s being polite. A tomato can is what the yanks used to call fighters like me. Someone who wouldn’t stink out a fight but wouldn’t trouble the contender too much. Someone who’d give the crowd what they came to see – blood.’ He crouched down on his hands and knees. ‘I did the right thing. Got out of the game as soon as I’d made enough money to buy this place.’ He ducked his head and looked under the desk.

  ‘Did Max say anything to you?’

  Brendan surfaced. ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Did he seem all right to you? Was he worried about anything?’

  ‘You sure you were just passing?’

  ‘You know me, Brendan. I’m always working.’

  He gave me a look that must have loosened the bowels of many an opponent. ‘Well, I’m saying nothing at all that’ll help you. Give me five minutes alone with your client and I could save the country a lot of money.’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – he’s innocent.’

  Two people I never wanted to see sitting side by side on a jury were my father and Brendan Patterson.

  ‘Until proven guilty. It’s what we lawyers call the presumption of innocence.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s the law.’

  ‘Innocent - everybody’s always innocent.’

  I understood how he felt at the loss of his friend, but his tone was a trifle self-righteous coming from someone I had defended on numerous reset charges over the years. If Brendan was any more of a fence he’d have needed a lick of creosote once a year. ‘That’s a judgement I don’t have to make,’ I told him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘to answer your question, I have no idea why anyone would want to kill Max. He was a pure gent.’ Brendan reached under the chest of drawers and dragged out a badly chewed Bic. He drew a black line across the palm of his hand. ‘We’re in business.’

  I decided not to press him any further about Max. I reached down and patted his shiny head. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll not charge a fee for signing your passport.’

  ‘That’s very good of you considering you’ve never paid for a drink since...’

  While he thought of an amusing quip, I took the pen and started to countersign the application form.

  ‘...since the Pope was a proddy,’ he came out with eventually.

  I left that particular denominational conundrum alone and continued to fill in the boxes. On TV the soap had finished and a photograph flashed up on the screen. It was a close-up of a man taken at some function or other. He was sitting at a table with an array of empty glasses in front of him, smoking a cigarette and smiling cheekily at the camera. Whoever had been sitting next to him had been pixelated. It took a few moments for me to realise that the subject of the photo was a young Chic Kelly and I wondered how come he had made the early afternoon news. I turned up the volume.

  ‘...Kelly who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Lord James Hewitt of Muthill, former Lord Justice Clerk, was found by prison staff hanging from a makeshift noose at six-thirty this morning...’

  A screw with a lot of silver braid on his shoulder made a brief appearance, stoutly defending prison procedures.

  Brendan, ever the economist, grunted. ‘Been a lot bloody cheaper if they’d hanged him years ago.’

  Chapter 33

  My concerns that Oskaras Salavejus might not fulfil his potential were unfounded.
No sooner had he ‘walked free’, as the local newspaper would later refer to his acquittal, than after over-indulging in some liquid celebrations he’d been lifted again, this time for a breach of the peace on the train to Glasgow.

  They’d huckled my client two stops down the line from Linlithgow at Falkirk High station where, after his now customary struggle with the cops, they’d carted him off. He’d been out of custody for less than four hours. With clients like him I’d be back on my feet in no time. I felt like pinning another medal to his chest and for such conduct above and beyond, I thought it only fitting that I should go pay him a visit. That and because I didn’t want the local duty lawyer hoovering him up.

  Two sets of automatic doors swung open for me as I swept into Falkirk Police office and a reception lobby of Orwellian proportions. The vaulted ceiling, marble floor and silk banners lining the sandstone walls brought to mind footage I’d seen of the Reichstag circa 1933. High on a wall, between torpedo-shaped plant holders, a plasma screen played a short information loop proclaiming the achievements of Central Scotland Police.

  I rang the bell at reception and was told I’d have to wait to see my client. I sat down on one of the two metal benches that had been designed with no regard to comfort, the hard edge of the seat catching me just behind the knee cutting off the circulation. Parts of my lower anatomy grew numb. To ease the flow of blood I paced the lobby, reading crime protection leaflets. ‘Look out There’s a Thief About’; ‘Lock It or Lose It’; all the old favourites were there and, pride of place, a new poster announcing yet another knife amnesty. Operation Cutting Edge: one month to hand in your unwanted chibs.

  I was spared the tedium of perusing the Force’s response-time statistics by a female member of the civilian staff who came around from behind the bullet proof glass and held the security door open for me. She was a large, friendly woman whom I recognised from the Sheriff Court, where until recently she had been a bar officer. Shona was her name, good with the punters as I recalled, had defused many a volatile situation with a wise-crack and a friendly warning. She’d swapped her crisp blue court uniform for a saggy black police tracksuit. The rear view was not flattering.

  ‘We’ve had a bit of trouble with your client,’ she said as I followed her wobbly buttocks along the corridor. ‘I have to warn you, he’s had a bucketful. He was shouting and threatening folk on the train.’ Sounded like Salavejus’s M.O. ‘I doubt if you’ll get much sense from him.’

  ‘At least he remembered to ask for me.’

  We came to another security door. Shona stopped. ‘He didn’t. We found your business card in his property.’

  The door led to the top of a flight of stairs so steep that I didn’t wonder why prisoners often fell down them. At the bottom was a barred gate through which was situated the custody suite or, as we lawyers prefer to call small rooms with locks on the doors: the cells.

  ‘In here.’ Shona let me into an interview room and I sat down on one of the bolted-down steel chairs either side of the equally bolted down steel table. ‘Maybe you can talk some sense into him and get him to belt up for five minutes. He’ll not stop rambling on about war and death and dying. The inspector’s talking about having him sectioned. He’ll be a custody at the Sheriff Court tomorrow, that’s a certainty.’

  Shona disappeared to return moments later carrying two plastic cups. She set one down in front of me. ‘They’ll bring him through in a minute. I thought you could both use some coffee,’ she said, referring to the scummy brown liquid in the cup. Still, it was kind of her. I thanked her and was blowing on the drink to cool it down when Salavejus arrived under the escort of a uniformed officer. He looked in much the same condition as I remembered seeing him at our first meeting; although on this occasion he was dressed in a white-paper boiler-suit and was obviously less hung-over and much more drunk. He was ushered into the room and told to sit down. I waited for the cop to leave.

  ‘We meet again,’ I said and slid a legal aid form across the table at him; always important to get your priorities right.

  Salavejus pushed the form back across the table. ‘Get me out,’ he slurred.

  ‘I can’t do that. Sign the form, go back to your cell, get your head down and I’ll see you in the morning. Do you have a bail address yet?’

  He saw the cup of coffee, took a mouthful and spat it out on the floor. I thought maybe I should come back when he’d dried out but I was here now and he hadn’t signed the legal aid form yet. ‘You must know by now that you need an address – any address. No address, no bail. Is there somewhere you can go? You were on the train to Glasgow. Where were you going? Do you have any family, maybe a friend who’ll take you in for a couple of weeks?’ I remembered Dougie Fleming’s evidence about Salavejus’s antics in the Bombay Balti. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

  In answer to my question Salavejus drew an arm across the table sending the plastic cups across the room. Unfortunately, most of the burning hot contents stayed behind, splashed onto the table and all over me. I yelled and jumped to my feet. Shona burst in through the door, reached across me and slammed her hand against the panic button on the wall. In an instant the door crashed open and the uniformed cop came in, grabbed my client and dragged him backwards off the chair and onto the floor. Salavejus thrashed about, kicking his legs wildly and screaming. Even in his drunken state he was threatening to overpower the cop until a few more of the custody team arrived and quickly quelled his drunken struggles. Altogether it took four of them to carry him back to his cell.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Shona, as my client’s shouts echoed down the corridor. ‘Hope those stains will come off your suit. Been a bit of a waste of time for you, I’m afraid. Mr Sal…. your client. We’re not keeping him. He can go.’

  ‘What?’

  She held up a slip of paper. ‘Inspector’s instructions. As soon as your man’s sobered-up he’s out of here. No charges. Free to go.’

  Oh well. No doubt I’d see him again.

  I followed her out, watching from the top landing as the cops tried to stuff Salavejus through the barred gate at the foot of the stairs while he flailed his arms and legs like a cat being put in the sink.

  Drink: it was a terrible thing. Unless you happened to be a criminal defence lawyer: in which case it was your main source of business.

  Chapter 34

  The end of another long week. My landlord was out to evict me, I had a murder client whose only defence was, I never done it and an assistant with a crisis of conscience. Then, of course, there was the fact that one of my best friends had been murdered and his paramour found dead in a field. Bubbles billowed around my shoulders. Hot water lapped against my neck. I groped for my slippery glass of whisky and took a sip. I was going to relax if it killed me and, hey, they were talking football on the radio, tomorrow was Saturday and the next day Sunday. I leaned my head back against the edge of the bath and closed my eyes. When I opened them again the late news was on, the water cold and bubbles in short supply.

  I stepped out of the bath and into a towelling robe. In the process I knocked the radio into the water. I was fishing it out when I heard a noise from the bedroom. I pulled the belt on my robe tight and opened the bathroom door but before I could set a foot outside, a black leather glove reached in, grabbed hold of my collar and wrenched me forward. I tripped and fell, knees burning on the carpet, head cracking off the wooden bedstead. Two hands reached down and pulled me upright. A fist slammed into the side of my face and I doubled up under a vicious blow to the ribs. I looked down at a pair of sturdy boots and then up at a familiar black ski mask. Deek Pudney - again?

  ‘Where is it?’ he growled.

  It didn’t sound like Deek. The voice was younger, somehow familiar. I remembered his spotty companion. ‘Tell Jake I’ll have his money next week.’

  A gloved hand seized my wet hair, the grip tightened, jerking my head back. The blur of a fist. I only just managed to turn my head so that the blow didn’t hit me full on the face. The t
aste of blood. The ski mask loomed over me. I sensed the fist drawing back again and raised my knee into my attacker’s groin. The grip on my hair slackened. I lunged forward, my forehead meeting the nose under the mask full on. I had some more success with an uppercut and tried to keep the momentum going but my next punch was parried. Heavy boots squashed my bare feet. A blow to the side of my head knocked me off balance. Before I could recover I felt cold metal press into the flesh under my chin. A gun? He had to be kidding. His orders would be to rough me up, put the frighteners on me - so far he was doing a damn fine job - but kill me? No chance. Rule one of debt collecting had to be ‘don’t kill the debtor’.

  ‘All right, All right.’ I twisted my head to the side and pointed to the wardrobe. I had some rainy day money stashed away. This was monsoon season.

  The mask turned to look. I was shoved forward. The gun rammed into the small of my back. ‘Get it.’

  I sucked in a few fast breaths and holding my injured side limped towards the wardrobe. Another push in the back. I banged my leg against the wobbly bed-post. I pointed to the wardrobe again. ‘Down the bottom. In a shoe box.’

  The man in the mask opened the wardrobe door and crouched down. I saw the pistol for the first time; it was chunky, square and grey. He moved it to his left hand while he seized the handle of the drawer with his right, wrenched it open and shook out the contents, littering the floor with folding money.

  ‘WHERE IS IT?’

  What was he talking about? Okay, it wasn’t all there, not nearly, but some cash had to be better than none. I backed off, bumping once more into the bed-post.

  The man in the mask began to rise to his feet again, transferring the pistol from left hand to right. Now was my chance. I took hold of the bed-post. Half a metre of solid oak. I pulled it from its socket and brought it down, aiming for the intruder’s head. He dodged and the blow struck him on the shoulder. As he recoiled in pain, I smashed the bed-post against one of his kneecaps. He dropped onto his good knee, trying to level the pistol. I struck again, catching him firmly across the right wrist. He fell back against the dressing table, dropping the gun.