Crime Fiction (Best Defence series Book 5)

by William H. S. McIntyre

  I lowered myself from the fountain and, feeling better, physically if not emotionally, set off on foot towards the far-off land that was parking zone F.

  Following the white lines in the middle of the road, I looked back at the Zanetti building. Blue and yellow lasers still flashed across its facade and the sound of big band music drifted on the still night air. Kaye was right. It had been like breaking into a prison. And now all the effort of breaching security, sneaking into the celebration, had turned out to have been one big waste of time.

  Like breaking into prison. The line of thought brought back to me Cupar Sheriff Court and the words of dead Doreen’s brother, his threats to kill the two young men who, as he saw it, had murdered his sister, vowing, even, to be sent to prison himself, just so he could get his hands on them. Few could fail to understand the boy’s emotions, and, yet, it was nothing more than frustrated bravado. The young man had no chance of getting near to either accused, inside or out of prison.

  I recalled another victim. Another woman: one Dominic Quirk had left bleeding and dying at the roadside. Wendy had been her name. Wendy Smith. The name in a memorial on the fly-leaf of Clyve Cree’s book. Clyve Cree who was Rupert Smith’s pseudo-son-in-law.

  For the first time I began to wonder: had Suzie been unsuccessful? Had my involvement and the retraction of Clyve Cree’s statement put an end to her plan? Or, was Dominic Quirk’s release on bail success enough? Was Suzie’s mission accomplished? If you can’t break into prison to get at someone. Why not have that someone released?

  Chapter 54

  There was more chance of Hitler getting into heaven than me getting back into the Zanetti’s Gala Ball, but I had to do something. By the time I’d reached parking bay B, I was already running, or very nearly. By the time I had reached parking bay C, I was breathing hard. Then I saw it: my car, just a few yards away; trouble was it was on the back of a recovery lorry that motored on by me despite some frantic waving of Kaye’s invitation/parking permit on my part.

  If my mobile phone hadn’t helped break my fall when I’d been forcibly removed from the party, I could have called a taxi. As it was I was completely stranded on the outskirts of Edinburgh and the ball wasn’t due to finish for hours. There would be no means of transport until then and it was a long walk to town.

  Retracing my steps, I began to walk back to the main entrance. Maybe they’d let me in to use the phone. As I struggled onwards, I saw, through the gloaming, the faint glimmer of a courtesy light. Drawn like some kind of night insect, I made a bee-line for it, realising as I neared that it came from the apple-green Bentley in parking zone B. The driver’s door was open and a large man sat one leg in, one leg out. He was smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Tam? Tam Bain?’

  The big man squinted at me, taking in my battered face and torn jacket.

  ‘My name’s Robbie Munro. I’m a lawyer. I—’

  ‘I know who you are. What do you want?’

  ‘I need a favour,’ I said. ‘I want you to contact your boss and tell him to come out here and meet me right now.’

  He pretended to think about it. ‘Nope.’

  His pinged cigarette stub kamikazed past my ear and threw up a little shower of orange sparks as it nose-dived into the tarmac.

  ‘I don’t think you understand,’ I said.

  ‘No. I do. Perfectly.’

  ‘Do you have a phone on you?’

  He patted the breast of his jacket.

  ‘Then let me call him myself. Once I’ve explained everything, I’m sure...’

  Using the car door he heaved himself to his feet.

  ‘Why was Clyve Cree working for Al Quirk on Thursday night?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know any Clyve Cree.’ Bain towered over me.

  ‘You gave up a shift and let him work it. Why? He’s not even employed by Falcon Security.’

  Bain’s reply was a straight-arm to my chest. The pain in my ribs made me gasp. My breathing came fast and shallow. ‘How much did he pay you to let him work for the night? To have a look around? Introduce himself to Dominic Quirk?’

  The big man feinted another strike. I flinched. He snorted a laugh and sat down again. I’d had enough. Before he was ready to close the door, I closed it for him. Seizing the window frame, putting all my weight behind it, I slammed the heavy door against his leg. His cry of pain was loud and long. It was even louder the second time. I leaned against the car door, keeping the leg trapped, while inside Bain flopped and flailed, eyes screwed-up, mouth like a burst welly. Each time he tried to push the door open, I put some extra weight on it and each time he fell back shrieking in pain. When I thought we’d reached an understanding, I took a little pressure off and told him to lower the window. As soon as I’d eased off the door he tried to push it open again with one almighty shove. Anticipating his actions, feet braced, I put my shoulder to the door and after some more thrashing about and a great deal of whimpering on his part the glass in the door slowly lowered a fraction.

  ‘Answer the question. Did you let someone else work your shift last Thursday?’

  He nodded several times in quick succession. Good, now we were getting somewhere.

  ‘What was his name?’

  My next question was answered by some frantic head shaking.

  ‘Did your employers know what you were doing?’

  More shakes of the big man’s head.

  ‘Were you paid?’

  Nothing.

  I leaned on the door.

  More nodding. Lots more nodding.

  ‘How much?’ I didn’t need an answer. There had been no expense spared so far. I was sure the chauffeur would have been offered a bung he couldn’t refuse. I ordered him to lower the window some more. ‘Far enough,’ I said after it was half way down. ‘Now take out your phone, call your boss and then hand it out to me.’ I gave the door a little extra shove by way of encouragement and he did as requested.

  ‘What do you want, Tam?’ I could just about hear Al Quirk’s gruff vocals over the strains of Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.

  ‘It’s not Tam, it’s Robbie Munro. Shut up and listen,’ I said, over his protests. ‘It’s about Dominic. I think he’s in danger.’

  ‘Listen, Munro. There is only one person in danger and that’s you. If you don’t hang up right now I swear I’m going to tell Tam to—’

  ‘Listen.’ I held the phone up to the gap in the window as I leaned against the door. But for the superior sound-proofing, a phone probably wouldn’t have been necessary for Al Quirk to hear his chauffeur’s cries of pain. ‘I know you think I’m crazy, but... hello?’

  Silence, some muffled voices and then Al Quirk’s voice again, less gruff, more even, almost friendly. ‘Hello, Mr Munro. Yes, what were you saying?’

  He was stalling. I craned my neck to look over to the Zanetti building. The reception entrance filled with a dozen or more white-jackets. They sprayed out of the doorway and down the red carpet, like the flecks of foam from Tam Bain’s gaping mouth. I wrenched the car door open, grabbed Bain by the front of his jacket and hauled. The big man made a grab for me, I sprang back out of reach of his grasping hands, he lunged forward, planted a foot and his injured leg gave way. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I kneed him under the chin as he fell forward onto his face, then stepped over the top of him and into the car.

  Chapter 55

  The twelve cylinder engine rumbled into life like distant thunder. I slipped the gearstick into drive and pressed my foot down on the accelerator. The car remained motionless. It was the rest of the world that started to move - very quickly. Parking zones B then A flashed past the window, the main driveway was a blur. By the time the entrance gates came flying to meet me, I doubted if the white-jackets had sprinted the length of the red carpet. How long would it take them to contact the cops? Al Quirk’s apple green Bentley wouldn’t exactly blend in with what little traffic there was on the roads that Saturday night. If I was caught I had a lot of explaining to do. Would a
nyone listen?

  It’s like this officer. The well-known, bestselling-author Suzie Lake, used her sexual charms to inveigle me into a cunning plan to have a prisoner released from prison so that the father and partner of the woman he killed could wreak their revenge, and I’m just on my way to save the day.

  The only question the police would ask was whether I’d like padding on my cell walls or would normal concrete do? Meantime, always assuming my theory was correct, St Andrews would be down one History of Art student and Mark Starrs would be standing trial for murder alone. For Dominic Quirk’s trial had already taken place. In his actual trial for killing Wendy Smith he’d been acquitted. In other less public proceedings, he’d been tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

  Tam Bain’s mobile phone was lying on the passenger seat. I was doing ninety down the Edinburgh by-pass when it started to play 2,4,6,8 Motorway by the Tom Robinson Band. I picked it up. Using a mobile phone while driving: what was one more criminal act to those I’d already committed that evening?

  ‘Munro?’ The dulcet tones of Al Quirk. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Doing? I’m trying to save your son’s life, that’s what I’m doing, except nobody wants to listen to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you’re not making any sense. Dominic is at home. Now, why don’t you come back to the party? We’ll sit down, have some champagne and talk things over.’ He didn’t sound angry. No, he sounded very calm, very collected, like he was talking to a crazy man.

  ‘If Dominic is home alone then he’s in danger! That’s where I’m going. If you want your car back, you’ll find it parked outside your house. I suggest if you haven’t already called the police, you do so right now!’

  I threw the phone back onto the seat and concentrated on the road ahead. How long would it take me to get to Quirk’s house? The motorway was fine, but, once I hit the city, things would slow considerably. And what would I find when I got there? How would it look if I arrived with the cops hot on my heels, only to find Dominic’s dead body and no-one there but me?

  I raced onwards, zipping past a sign indicating the next slip-road, one mile ahead. If I came off there, I’d have to drive through the city. Better to stay on the dual-carriageway as long as possible, even if it meant doubling back later.

  The faster the wheels of the Bentley spun, the faster my brain whirled. Was Al Quirk correct? Was I crazy? Was I reading too much into things? Suzie’s role seemed simple enough. On the verge of bankruptcy she’d do anything for money, and milking me for inside information had been an easy way to make money. Clyve Cree? A soldier. A man of violence. His partner had been killed and now he wanted revenge. It was Rupert Smith, Mr Posh, who was causing me problems. Like Cree, I could understand his lust for revenge. And his scheme to blackmail me if I revealed the truth behind Cree’s witness statement was a clever safety net. But why come to see me in the first place with tales of Victor Devlin’s lost wealth and the need to recover a memory-stick? What was the point of sending me on a fool’s errand to rummage around in Devlin’s abandoned hideaway home for a memory-stick his pseudo-son-in-law would rip from my grasp five minutes after it had come into my possession?

  There was nothing for it but to press on. As I approached the city centre turn-off, breaking a hundred like I was breaking wind, I noticed another apple green Bentley Flying Spur coming towards me. Before that night I’d only ever set eyes on one such car and I was driving it. Behind the wheel of the other vehicle, I could just make out the head and shoulders of a big man under a peaked hat, and silhouetted through the off-side rear passenger window, two more heads. I planted my foot on the brakes. I’d expected a skid, the burning of rubber, a screeching of brakes. There was none of that. The Flying Spur slowed, quickly, elegantly. I turned the wheel and without a word of complaint it obediently bumped across the chevrons, clipped a kerb and ploughed on up the slip-road. I’d been going in the wrong direction. I shouldn’t be travelling west to Al Quirk’s house. I should be travelling east to Victor Devlin’s.

  * * * * *

  It took some time and one or two wrong turns before I found myself back on the by-pass, heading in the opposite direction and careering towards the coast at warp factor nine. The drive up the stony track felt a lot less bumpy than before. The Flying Spur’s suspension eased the big car along like a knob of butter gliding the length of a freshly-flipped pancake. It wasn’t dark. July in Scotland: the sun might spend the day playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, but it never went to bed early. In the half-light, not even the Bentley’s silent approach would be enough to conceal my arrival. I pulled to a gentle halt and parked alongside my Flying Spur’s twin-sister. There was no sign of Rupert, Cree or Dominic, but, at the speed I’d been travelling, I couldn’t have been far behind them. I sat there for a moment or two. What if I was wrong? I’d once said that with a little imagination and a lot of money a person could get out of any trouble. Had, perhaps, too little money and too much imagination got me into a world of bother?

  Just then the front door to the white-washed cottage opened and Rupert Smith appeared between the large flowerpots either side, hands behind his back, a welcoming smile on his florid face.

  Taking Tam Bain’s phone with me, I alighted, slamming the heavy car door as though the chauffeur’s leg was still hanging out of it.

  ‘I’ll say one thing for you, Mr Munro, you’re persistent,’ Rupert said. ‘Come on in. We’ll take a dram together. I know you appreciate a good whisky.’

  He knew all right. That’s why he’d arranged for Suzie to bring me a bottle of it.

  Rupert backed through the door like he expected me to follow. That wasn’t happening.

  ‘The police came to see me, by the way,’ I called after him, not moving from the spot. ‘This afternoon. They were looking for a bottle of Bowmore whisky. Someone had made a report of a theft. It couldn’t have been the owner, though.’

  Rupert emerged slowly from the shadows, having left his smile behind. ‘And why is that?’ he asked.

  ‘Because he’s dead. He stole a fortune from you and you stole a bigger one back. You didn’t need a memory-stick, you had the man and his memory right where you wanted them. Did Clyve obtain the information from Devlin the hard or the easy way?’

  Rupert snorted. ‘If I took back from Devlin what he’d stolen, why would I kill him?’

  ‘For the same reason you want to kill Dominic Quirk. Revenge. You kill them and then get your revenge on me too by framing me for their murders.’

  That’s why he’d transferred into the Munro & Co. bank account twenty-thousand of Victor Devlin’s highly traceable pounds. That was why Rupert had sent me here in the first place - not for a memory-stick - so that I could plaster the interior of the old stone cottage with enough Robbie Munro fingerprints and DNA to keep a team of scene of crime officers on over-time for a month. Rupert had known I’d not drink such a valuable malt. He’d intended for the police to find the whisky in my recent possession and when the owner did not follow up his complaint on Monday, they’d call out here to tell him the good news, only to find him dead and me wrapped up in a nice little package of forensic evidence.

  ‘You really do have quite an imagination,’ Rupert said.

  ‘Where’s Dominic Quirk? Is he still alive?’

  ‘Why should you care?’

  ‘You’ve had your revenge on Victor Devlin,’ I said to Rupert. ‘You’ve got your money back, and no doubt you’ve squared-up Suzie Lake too. Why not leave it at that? Dominic’s going to jail anyway and I was only doing my job when he was acquitted of killing your daughter.’

  ‘You mean of murdering her.’ Rupert’s face was ablaze. Any pretence at innocence had drifted away on the sea breeze. ‘He smashed into her and left her there to bleed to death like a wounded animal.’

  ‘So you’re going to murder him. A life for a life. Is that it? What about Devlin? Do you think a capital sentence is appropriate for theft? Even theft on such a la
rge scale?’

  ‘Don’t try to justify that cheating bastard!’ Rupert’s fists were clenched by the sides of his tartan trews. ‘He swindled good people, took everything they’d worked their whole lives for. People who I’d recommended invest in his scam.’ His face crumpled. ‘My best friend died blaming me in a suicide note.’

  This was not the Rupert I knew. This was a man in agony. Agony over the death of a daughter whose killer had walked away Scot free, thanks to me. Piled on top of that anguish was the financial disaster occasioned by Victor Devlin. Why wouldn’t Mr Posh want revenge? There would be more people dancing on Devlin’s grave then at the Zanetti gala ball. As for Dominic, to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to kill one innocent woman might be misfortune; to kill two looked more than a little careless. Who but the young man’s immediate family wouldn’t see some justice in his death?

  And, yet, it had always seemed unfair to me. A man skips a red light. If there is no accident, he gets a small fine and three penalty points. If he crashes into another car and the other driver dies, he goes to prison. The same degree of negligence applies in each scenario, only luck determines the sentence. Dominic’s trial hadn’t been such a famous victory after all. Better to have been convicted. Better in jail than in the ground.

  ‘It’s over,’ I said. I pulled Tam Bain’s mobile phone from my trouser pocket. It was safe to call the police now. Rupert could try and justify his actions as much as he wanted. The very fact of his presence here at the cottage was enough to satisfy me beyond reasonable doubt that my latest theory was correct. I had to save Dominic. I needed him to clear my name and Mark Starrs needed him to go to trial, for only if Dominic led his defence of culpable homicide would my client be guaranteed an acquittal on the murder charge. If Dominic was out of the way, Cameron Crowe would see my client as the only show in town. I held up the phone. ‘Bring Dominic out here and I’ll let you and Cree leave before I call the cops. You’ve got money, a fast car and a head start. It’s the best deal you’re going to get.’