Duty Man (Best Defence series Book 2)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  ‘Culpable homicide.’

  ‘And is suspected in several unsolved killings spanning three decades.’

  ‘He’s an old client, concerned for his friend’s son.’ There I went, defending Frankie again. Force of habit.

  ‘Is it his money? Is that why you let him hang around your office?’ Clearly, Frankie was under surveillance. How much did Lockhart know? Had she found out about Frankie paying my rent arrears? ‘What have you told him about the case?’ she asked.

  I had told Frankie very little about the case, and what I told or didn’t tell clients, even former clients, was nothing to do with any cop, no matter how pretty.

  ‘Frankie’s a charity worker now. He runs a soup kitchen.’

  ‘As well as owning the actual Church building and a portfolio of other properties throughout Edinburgh.’

  We didn’t enter Bo’ness town centre, instead Lockhart took the right fork onto Dean Road, past the cemetery and then over the Flints in the direction of Linlithgow. Such was the rivalry between the two towns that when I was young the folk used to say that the only good thing to come out of Bo’ness was the road to Linlithgow.

  There was no further talk until we reached the brow of the hill at the entrance to West Lothian Golf Club and from there into a tight S bend. It was a stretch of road I knew well. A stretch of road that always caused the hairs on the back of my neck to prickle. I felt a lump in my throat as we approached the very tree where my mother had died so many before, on the way to the police station to bail out her favourite pupil.

  ‘What’s Frankie McPhee ever done for you?’ Lockhart said, breaking the silence with timing that was too perfect. She was some machine. ‘Tell me what you know and I promise to keep whatever you say strictly between us. I guarantee your name will not be mentioned.’

  It was tempting, so very tempting. We entered Linlithgow. On our left, a pen swan and her cygnets waddled down to the reeds at the edge of the loch. In the distance, the open crown spire atop St Michael’s Church shone in the winter sunshine. I’d liked Lockhart from the moment I’d first met her. I had no doubt she’d be as good as her word.

  ‘Okay,’ Lockhart said. She must have sensed that I was beginning to wilt. ‘Maybe it would help if I told you that I was one of the officers who interviewed Chic Kelly after Lord Hewitt’s death. It was my first major assignment after returning to the force with my law degree. I was a Detective Sergeant. Chic confessed. I made Inspector.’

  There was no note of pride in her voice. Did Lockhart know about Chic’s theory on the death of Lord Hewitt? Did she now believe she may have got the wrong man?

  Lockhart pulled the car over. ‘Mr Munro… can I call you Robbie?’ I consented. She continued. ‘Robbie, at the turn of the year, Chic wrote to me from prison. He told me he was terminally ill and wanted to put the record straight. He also wanted to know if there was still a reward on offer for information leading to the conviction of Lord Hewitt’s killer. I thought it was a joke and though I did go to see him, I have to say, I didn’t take what he had to say very seriously. I do now.’ Lockhart reached into her jacket pocket and removed a turquoise-covered police notebook.

  ‘I can’t help noticing that we’re back on your patch,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll give you a formal caution if you like, but I don’t want you to say anything. I just want you to read this.’ She handed me the notebook. There was a rubber band around it from top to bottom marking the place.

  I’m always wary about the contents of police notebooks, but I felt sure I already knew what was in this one. I looked at Detective Chief Inspector Lockhart and her serenely beautiful, yet earnest face and began to wade through page after page of Chic Kelly’s statement. It was just as Chic had told me. And yet the housebreaker hadn’t known the whole story. He didn’t know why Frankie had wanted so badly to retrieve the stuff from Lord Hewitt’s house. I did and could easily imagine Gordon Devine in a state of panic contacting Frankie after the aborted fraud trial. Probably out of arrogance more than ignorance he’d written the blackmail note in his own hand. Now he had to get it back. He would be willing to pay anything and Frankie would do anything for money. What to do? A break-in artist like Chic could have been in and out in no time at all. Frankie on the other hand lacked his friend’s expertise as Lord Hewitt had discovered to his cost.

  I turned to the last page.

  ‘It’s signed,’ Lockhart said.

  I’d expected nothing less. I knew where this conversation was going.

  She stared hard at me. ‘What does it matter if Sean Kelly doesn’t want you as his lawyer? He’s still entitled to justice like everyone else and so is Max Abercrombie.’ I looked straight ahead out of the windscreen. She moved nearer. I could feel the breath from her lips against my cheek, smell the light fresh fragrance of her perfume. ‘Robbie, you owe Frankie McPhee nothing. He’s scum.’

  She was keen, I’d give her that. Then again you didn’t get to be Detective Chief Inspector at Lockhart’s relatively tender age without some fairly dramatic results. Nailing the true killer of Lord Hewitt of Muthill, Scotland’s former Lord Justice Clerk would be another rung on her ever-extending career ladder. I was sure that her superiors could overlook the small fact that all those years ago, Lockhart and her colleague had extracted a confession from an innocent man.

  I gave her back the notebook. She didn’t have to tell me how important Chic Kelly’s statement had become. While Chic had been alive, the statement in Lockhart’s notebook had been interesting but of no evidential value. It was hearsay and inadmissible. For it to stand up in court, Chic would have had to go into the witness box, adopt the statement as his own and testify to its accuracy. Prisons weren’t safe places for rats. But people’s attitudes changed as death beckoned. When Chic called Lockhart had he been aware that upon his death his statement would become admissible; courtesy of section 259 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. If Chic hadn’t been prepared to grass Frankie in life, he could do so from beyond the grave him and it might mean leaving his family a financial legacy.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Lockhart.

  What I thought was that Chic’s statement was a decent piece of evidence but it was only one source. To seek a conviction, the Crown would need a second and Lockhart was looking to me for that corroboration. I realised now that the photos and blackmail note were not the important things. It was the clothes: the gloves and shirt, splattered with judicial blood on the outside, smeared with the killer’s DNA on the inside. Was that why Max had been killed? So Frankie could make sure the package, kept safe by Chic all those years, never saw the light of day? It was so difficult to make sense of it all. Why would Chic think that I would use the package against one of my old client’s? What was in it for me? Any skim I could have taken from the reward could easily have been matched by Frankie and without any retribution. No, I had to be certain of my facts before I opened up to the police.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t help you.’

  ‘Can’t, Mr Munro, or won’t?’ Lockhart slipped smoothly from good into bad cop mode. ‘I think I should warn you that I’m going to get to the bottom of this case with or without your help. If you choose not to assist my enquiries then should I discover any illegalities involving yourself I will not turn a blind eye.’

  She sounded like my dad.

  I undid my seat-belt and made to open the car door. Lockhart reached across me and held it shut.

  ‘If nothing else, heed your father’s warning,’ she said. ‘Frankie McPhee is a dangerous man.’ She let go of the door handle and thrust a police calling card at me. ‘My mobile number’s on the back. You can call me anytime, day or night.’ I took the card from her. She smiled. Good cop again. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘Any time.’

  CHAPTER 49

  Following hard on the heels of the lecture from Chief Inspector Lockhart, next morning I received another; this time from Grace-Mary, on the subject of Munro & Co.’s finances. I tried my best to pay a
ttention though at that time I had more things to worry about than the size of my overdraft; like an imminent face-to-face with Frankie McPhee.

  I’d been up all night thinking about Frankie’s possible involvement in Max’s death. I was certain that Max, and, for some reason, Jacqui, had been murdered by a person attempting to recover Chic’s blackmail package. Frankie McPhee clearly had a motive, as did, I now realised, Gordon Devine.

  At a corner table in Sandy’s that morning, over a coffee and bacon roll, I was still mulling things over, trying to come to a verdict on who had killed my friend. On any rational view of the available evidence it had to be Frankie, and yet although my dad would undoubtedly disagree, I believed that Frankie McPhee was most certainly… well almost certainly, a changed man. Anyone who knew Frankie’s track record from way back would not have been unduly astonished at the suggestion that he was responsible for Lord Hewitt’s murder, but I was sure he hadn’t killed Max. For one thing my childhood friend had been shot by an amateur. Frankie was a pro. For another, if Frankie was after Chic’s blackmail package then he’d have it by now and myself, Sean Kelly and anyone else who’d set eyes on it would be an integral part of Britain’s motorway network. Of course, I might be horribly wrong, which was why I intended to return Big Jo-Jo’s car personally. I wanted to test Frankie’s reaction to a few questions and asking them in broad daylight, with plenty of witnesses around, seemed to me the best way to go about it.

  So, after keeping my secretary at bay with some wholly unjustifiable profit forecasts and dropping into Sandy’s for a coffee to go, I set off for Edinburgh and Frankie McPhee’s soup kitchen.

  It was the back of eleven when I arrived and found to my alarm that the place was empty. Obviously, they didn’t do lunch. I heard noises coming from the back hall and I went through to the kitchen where I came across Frankie standing at a large wooden table, chopping vegetables with the sort of knife familiar to slasher-movie aficionados. His disciple, Big Jo-Jo Johnstone, was standing at the sink in apron and pink Marigolds, scrubbing at a soup pot with an orange scouring pad.

  When Frankie saw me enter he put the knife down on the chopping board. ‘Robbie. Good to see you. Didn’t hear you come in. As you can see we’re a bit short-handed. Me and Jo-Jo have been here all morning and there’s still a mountain of spuds to peel.’

  If that was a hint for me to grab an apron and tattie-peeler, I didn’t take it. Instead I took the faded blue folder from my coat. Inside it were the photos of Lord Hewitt and Gordon Devine’s handwritten note.

  I breathed in deeply and handed the folder to Frankie. He wiped his hands on the tea cloth that was tucked into his belt before opening the folder and flicking through the photos.

  ‘What do you know about these?’ he asked, his expression giving nothing away.

  ‘That Gordon Devine used them to try and blackmail the judge at your trial back in two thousand and one. And that you stole them, or, rather, reclaimed them on Gordon’s behalf.’

  ‘Where did you find them?’

  ‘Chic had them stashed. I think he’s been blackmailing Devine for years. Betty says she gets money from a trust fund. When he knew he was dying, he wanted the truth to be told.’

  ‘The truth? Really? Who, Chic?’

  ‘Okay, he mainly wanted his family to claim the reward money when it was proved who the real killer was. He needed somebody to carry out the necessary negotiations. He asked his son to deliver the evidence to me.’

  Frankie nodded. ‘Makes sense. Chic would know you’d do anything so long as there was a few quid in it.’

  ‘Yeah? Well judge not,’ I said. ‘Remember you’re the one on licence.’

  Frankie shrugged. ‘Anyway, what’s all this got to do with me? Lord Hewitt’s dead and buried and so is the man convicted of his murder.’

  Skilfully put, I thought. I took the folder from him and waved it in front of his face. ‘Sean couldn’t find me. He went to see Max Abercrombie. These photos and the note are the reason Sean Kelly is looking at a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit.’

  Frankie picked up the knife and started chopping again. ‘That’s something you don’t have to worry about, seeing as how you’re off the case.’

  I put my hand on his, pressing it down against the wooden chopping board. ‘I’ll decide when I’m off the case, not some nineteen-year-old who doesn’t know any better.’

  Frankie pulled his hand away. Still holding the knife, he took a step back. ‘What’s this? Robbie Munro emotionally attached to a client - and one who can’t pay a fee at that? You must be getting soft. Face it, there’s nothing in this for you anymore. You’re out. Is that not what you wanted from the start?’

  ‘I’m doing this for Max. If Sean Kelly is acquitted that’s a bonus.’

  Frankie dumped a few double handfuls of diced turnip into a large cooking pot. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To ask for your help.’

  ‘What kind of help?’

  ‘Your speciality - protection.’

  Frankie went to the sink and filled the pot with water. ‘Have you thought of going to the police?’

  ‘No, but the police have thought of coming to see me. They think that you were responsible for killing the Lord Justice Clerk.’ Frankie’s face remained expressionless. ‘I don’t care if you were. For what it’s worth I do believe that you’re a changed man and I want your help to find out who’s chasing these photos because I believe that’s who murdered Max.’

  He put the pot on the stove and lit the gas. Throughout our conversation I never mentioned the gloves and shirt. I wanted to see if Frankie would mention them. Did he know they still existed? If so, why wait until now to try and recover the contents of the canvas satchel? Chic had spent years in prison, an easy target for someone with Frankie’s connections.

  Frankie began to wash a stack of bowls. ‘What are you going to do with the folder?’

  I picked up a tea towel. ‘One person who has to be keen to recover it is the man who wrote the note. I’m having lunch with Gordon Devine at his place in a couple of hours. I don’t see him as the hitman, but I’ll bet he knows who pulled the trigger. Plan A is to confront him with what I know. If he gives me Max’s murderer, I’ll give him back his photos and the note he so stupidly wrote.’

  ‘Got it all worked out, haven’t you?’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  He rinsed a bowl and handed it to me. ‘You took a risk telling me all this. I could be working with Devine.’

  It had crossed my mind more than once. ‘What can I say? I’m a good judge of character.’ I dried the bowl and put it on the draining board. ‘Well? Can I count on you?’

  Frankie was giving the next dirty bowl his full attention. ‘Robbie, I told you before. I can’t. I’m on licence. If I so much as drop a toffee wrapper on the pavement, I’m back inside. I’ve put a lot into this place. I’ve too much at stake...’

  ‘The old Frankie McPhee would have helped me.’

  He took the dish towel from me. ‘The old Frankie McPhee is dead.’

  I’d been half expecting a refusal, but when I thought of all the strokes I’d pulled for him in years gone by I was still hurt.

  ‘Be seeing you, Jo-Jo,’ I said, as I walked past the big man on my way to the door. Out of the corner of my eye I could see something protruding from underneath one of his rolled-up shirt sleeves and into a pink rubber glove. As far as I could make out it was some kind of bandage. My blood ran cold. The bed-post: it was half a metre of solid oak.

  ‘See ya Mr Munro.’

  I knew I shouldn’t but I had to ask. ‘What happened to you?’ I went up to him and rapped his arm with a knuckle.

  ‘Repetitive strain injury,’ he said, proudly. ‘Peeling tatties.’ He rolled the rubber glove down to partially reveal a light blue plastic splint. He held out his injured arm to me. ‘It’s not exactly a stookie but you can sign it if you want.’

  I ran my eye down the splint. There were only one or two
scrawled signatures. Given Jo-Jo’s contacts, if he’d been wearing it for any length of time I’d have expected it to read like the custody sheet for Monday morning at the Sheriff Court.

  ‘How long you had it?’ I asked.

  ‘Not long. When did I get it, Frankie?’ Frankie stirred the pot and said nothing. I studied the scribbles, trying to decipher them. Jo-Jo sighed enormously. ‘Are you gonna sign it or no?’

  ‘I’m a lawyer,’ I said. ‘I don’t sign anything without reading it first.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Jo-Jo said. He pulled his arm away, rolled the rubber glove back over the splint and plunged his arms once more into the soapy water.

  CHAPTER 50

  I drew off the A9, drove through the small Perthshire town of Braco and onto a single track road for several winding miles. The countryside around was beautiful: green rolling hills and clutches of woodland. I remembered reading that James the Sixth used to have hunting lodges all about the area. Apparently, after a day’s boar-spearing he liked to round up some witches, tie them to posts and set fire to them, like giant candles. A medieval form of patio heating I supposed.

  I rounded yet another corner and the Hewitt ancestral pile hoved into view. I knew the lawyers at Hewitt Kirkwood & Devine charged like wounded rhinos, but the Firm must have been doing even better than I imagined for Gordon Devine to have been able to buy the stylish courtyard mansionhouse from the dead judge’s estate.

  Having gone through to Edinburgh to meet with Frankie McPhee, I was well behind schedule even though the journey had taken less time than I’d expected; partly due to me having borrowed my assistant’s nippy wee hatchback again and also because the property was not as far away as the village of Muthill and a lot closer to Blackford. Then again, Lord Hewitt of Blackford hadn’t quite the same ring - too many council houses.