Good News, Bad News

by WHS McIntyre

  Ellen assisted his search for the right word. ‘Grateful?’

  Freddy dragged the words out of his throat like a sick man dragging himself out of bed. ‘Yes, I am grateful.’

  ‘Then show it.’

  He placed his other hand on top of hers and squeezed. ‘Thank you, Ellen.’

  The waitress returned with a bottle of mineral water and a tall glass with ice and a slice. Ellen extracted her hand from Freddy’s grip.

  ‘Good. Then I’ll let you go for now,’ she said to him. ‘I’ll stay here with Robbie. We have some legal formalities to talk over. Give him your phone number so he can keep in touch.’

  It took a few moments for Freddy to realise he’d been dismissed. I wrote down his mobile number, and, without another word, he stood and began to walk towards The Pleasance. Then he changed his mind and instead walked back up West Richmond Street.

  Ellen watched him go. ‘Boy, he hasn’t half lost weight,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all the worry, apparently. Maybe he’ll relax a little when he gets his hands on your money.’

  ‘Ah, yes. My money.’ Ellen poured the contents of the bottle into her glass. ‘I think there’s maybe something I should tell you about that.’

  19

  ‘She doesn’t have any!’ Joanna stopped stirring the pot. Tina was sitting at the kitchen table, bowl and spoon at the ready, all set to do damage to the loaf of bread and a pat of butter in the centre of the big wooden table. First of all, the soup had to arrive.

  ‘No, she has some money,’ I said.

  ‘But she didn’t win the lottery?’

  ‘No, she did win the lottery. Just not all that much.’

  ‘I thought you told me it was five hundred thousand.’

  ‘I did. That was wrong.’

  ‘How wrong?’

  ‘It was nearer fifty thousand.’

  ‘How much nearer?’

  ‘Exactly nearer.’

  Joanna turned off the gas, took the pot and ladle over to the table and served up a large helping. Tuesday night was Tina’s weekly golf lesson at the nearby Kingsfield driving range, and my dad’s turn to take her, just as it was Joanna’s turn to make the tea, a duty that seemed to fall to her a lot these days as my dad came up with more and more excuses.

  The old man entered the kitchen tightening his belt, folded newspaper under his arm, look of satisfaction on his face. ‘I’m thinking maybe I should alert the coastguard,’ he said, taking a seat at the table next to his granddaughter. ‘That one I’ve just flushed could be a danger to shipping.’

  From somewhere deep in Joanna’s throat came a low rumbling sound. I put an arm around her. I whispered in her ear. ‘Keep calm. It’s only until we have our own place.’ She tried to pull away. I held on, pinning her arms to her side, the ladle in her hand dripping soup onto the floor.

  ‘I don’t like nippy carrot,’ Tina said, staring down at the faintly orange gloop in her bowl.

  ‘I’ve got to say, Joanna, I’m not all that keen on it either,’ my dad said. ‘No offence or nothing, but you do remember the last time?’

  ‘It’s not nippy,’ Joanna said. I let her go and she shoved the ladle back into the pot. ‘It’s not even carrot! And I only added some chilli the last time to liven it up, because you, Alex . . .’ she dished my dad up a big bowl of orange gloop, ‘told me the time before, that I should have left the wooden spoon in to lend a bit more flavour.’

  Tina picked up a spoonful and let it drop from six inches. Some of it landed back in her soup bowl. ‘What is it, then? It looks like nippy carrot.’

  ‘It’s butternut squash and sweet potato.’

  ‘Mmm. Looks great,’ I said. ‘Makes me wish I hadn’t had something to eat earlier.’

  ‘Butternut squash?’ My dad stared into the murky depths of the bowl. ‘Was that what that thing in the vegetable rack was? Looked to me like one of those pods from that film we saw the other night: Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. I don’t suppose there’ll be any meat in it?’

  ‘No,’ Joanna replied, through teeth firmly clenched, pot in one hand, ladle still gripped tightly in the other. ‘That’s because, unlike the Alex Munro vegetarian soup recipe, I don’t make mine with a chicken.’ The vegetarian debate was one we’d had several times since Joanna had moved in. To be fair, when it was her turn to cook she had no problem preparing meat dishes for the rest of us. ‘You know it is possible, just occasionally, to have a meal that doesn’t involve something dying. But don’t worry. This soup is only to keep you going until you get back. I’ll slam a piece of dead animal in the oven for later.’

  Joanna rattled the pot back onto the stove, chucked the ladle in after it and marched through to the living room.

  ‘It’s not for much longer,’ I called after her.

  ‘It better not be!’ she called back. ‘Two months it’s been, and no remission for good behaviour.’

  I turned to the two diners. ‘I really wish you two would stop complaining about the food. Joanna’s doing her best. Today was her first day back at work and to hear the pair of you, you’d think you were expecting her to come home and whip-up a quick paupiette of guinea fowl in a wild mushroom mousseline.’

  ‘What’s a pappoo . . . ?’ Tina began.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘It’s just me being funny.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. That apparently explained everything.

  My dad gave the soup a few tentative slurps. ‘Actually, it’s not all that bad. Quite good really.’

  ‘Not bad? Quite good? Go easy on the extravagant praise, won’t you?’

  ‘No, I mean it. You might have the makings of a good wee cook there, Robbie.’

  ‘Well, it would be nice if you tell her that,’ I said. ‘Just don’t make it sound quite so patronising when you do. You know what patronising means, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re a funny man.’ My dad helped himself to some bread and butter. I noticed that Tina was now also digging in and seemingly enjoying the sludge. ‘What I will say is that this soup’s a lot better than your last attempt, Robbie. Remember that, Tina? What was it supposed to be? Pea and ham? Tasted more like pee and poo.’

  I left the two of them spluttering over their soup bowls, to join Joanna in the living room.

  ‘Just what does she think she’s playing at?’ Joanna asked, when I sat down beside her on the sofa.

  ‘Don’t listen to her. Tina’s loving your soup.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Tina. I’m talking about Ellen Fletcher. What’s she up to?’

  ‘She has a plan.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘To insure her life.’

  ‘But she’s dying.’

  ‘Best time to get life insurance, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘She’ll never get it. No insurance company is going to insure her when it finds out . . .’ It was taking some time, but Joanna was getting there. ‘She isn’t going to disclose her illness? But that’s fraud!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s what I told her . . .’ I walked over and shut the kitchen door. ‘Just not quite so loudly as that.’

  ‘How much is she going to insure herself for?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, but definitely a lot.’

  ‘Then you are definitely having nothing more to do with her. Is that clear?’

  Joanna’s enunciation was as ever crystalline. I didn’t really need the accompanying pokes in the chest to understand what she was saying. I took hold of the finger that was doing all the poking. ‘It’s all right. I’ve told Ellen I’m not getting involved. I’ve returned Freddy to her. My work is done.’

  ‘It had better be.’ Joanna flopped back on the sofa. ‘I still don’t get all the fuss about bringing him home.’

  ‘Ellen’s got this crazy notion that by dying she can pay off Jake and save Freddy’s life. I suppose it would be nice for her to know she’s not dying in vain.’ I said. ‘You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘What? Commit a majo
r fraud?’

  ‘Well . . . Yes. To save my life.’

  The question went unanswered. Tina burst through the door and hurled herself onto the sofa between us. ‘I like butter, nuts and squash soup!’

  I lifted her up and plonked her on my knee. ‘That’s good because it’s what all the best golfers eat before they practise. Butternut squash soup and bread, especially the crusts. Did you eat your crusts?’

  My dad walked in. ‘Of course she ate her crusts.’

  ‘And I won’t find them forming a neat little circle under her soup bowl, like the last time?’ Joanna asked.

  Tina was saying nothing that might incriminate herself. My dad scooped her off my knee and up into his arms. ‘Come on or we’ll be late. It’s only a half-hour lesson, and if you’re good we’ll go to Sandy’s for ice cream afterwards.’

  Sandy’s café lay claim not only to the world’s finest bacon roll, but, when it came to homemade ice cream, it was pointless for others to compete.

  ‘I want a black man!’ Tina yelled, jumping down from my dad’s arms and running off to fetch her coat.

  ‘Alex, she’s learned that from you. I’ve told you not to let Tina hear you call them that.’ Joanna followed the pair of them into the hall and called out of the front door after them, ‘It’s not a black man! It’s a nougat wafer!’ She returned to the living room and dropped onto the sofa beside me. ‘We’ve really, really got to find our own place. If it’s not black men, it’s Chinky carry-outs and Paki shops. That man’s going to end up getting his granddaughter arrested for making racist remarks.’

  She stretched out on the couch, her legs across my knees. Somehow I knew what she was going to say next. ‘Talking about granddaughters and crime, what’s happening with Antonia Brechin?’

  I slipped an arm around Joanna and pulled her towards me. We had at least an hour to ourselves.

  ‘What’s she going to do, Robbie? Are you really taking it to trial? What’s the plan?’

  I had absolutely no idea.

  ‘Then, you’d better come up with one.’ She snuggled into me. ‘But then you usually do.’

  I hoped she was right, but, for the moment, I didn’t care. We had an hour.

  20

  Joanna’s faith in me was touching; however, it was exactly one week before I could think of something, anything, that might help resolve Antonia Brechin’s plight. Even then, what I eventually came up with was less of a long shot and more of a punt at goal from the halfway line.

  ‘Oh no, it’s you.’

  Ogilvie, white vest, white trackies, red towel draped around his scrawny neck, was putting his lanky body through a series of painful looking stretches and bends.

  ‘Evening, Hugh,’ I said. ‘This is a coincidence.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Not unless coincidences could be bought it wasn’t. I’d had to pay nineteen-ninety-nine for a temporary gym membership that I was never going to use again.

  ‘Joanna says I’ve put on a little weight.’ I patted the Boca Juniors home strip that I reserved for Friday night five-a-sides.

  Ogilvie shook his head, sadly. ‘Joanna Jordan. How on earth did you manage to talk her into marrying you? She has got one thing right though.’ He took the towel from his neck and flicked my stomach with it.

  I caught the end and threw it back at him. Yes, it was true that when I took off my shirt they didn’t issue a missing person’s alert, but I didn’t see my fuller physique as being in urgent need of reduction. ‘Never mind my figure, how about we take this opportunity to have a serious word about Antonia Brechin’s case?’

  ‘How about we don’t?’ Ogilvie glimpsed someone alighting from a running machine and leapt on to it before I could stop him.

  I tried some limbering-up exercises myself, one leg over the other, touching my toes, or very nearly, anywhere south of the knees was pretty good for me, and followed that with a few lunges, which were possibly inadvisable since, like the football top, my shorts seemed to have shrunk since they were last on; nonetheless, the exercise did help me manoeuvre closer to the PF’s running machine.

  ‘The only serious thing I’m here to do,’ he said, raising his voice along with the speed of the conveyor belt beneath his feet, ‘is train for a half-marathon at the end of the month.’

  I could think of nothing worse than running a half-marathon, unless it was running a whole marathon. Why did people do it to themselves? Running was all very well in its place: good for catching buses and trains, chasing footballs, stuff like that, but running for no reason? I could never understand it. Indeed, I was at odds with the whole notion of exercise for exercise sake. It was fine if you were enjoying yourself by playing a game. Football, golf, even tennis, if you were that way inclined, or cricket. Well . . . maybe not cricket, but most games. They were called games for a reason: you had fun playing them. Fun and games went together like fun and gym didn’t. What Hugh Ogilvie was doing, picking up his size nines and slapping them down again on a rolling rubber mat - that wasn’t fun. He was on a treadmill, an item historically used as an instrument of torture. I didn’t like to think of all the wasted heartbeats. They only gave you so many and then you died. Why use them up doing something that made you look like Ogilvie did right then? With his red face and white sports gear, he reminded me of an unused match. The man should have been grateful when I pulled the little green safety cord and the running machine carried out an emergency stop.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Ogilvie demanded, after he’d regained his balance.

  I picked up a couple of loose weights that were lying nearby and began some casual bicep curls. ‘Do yourself a favour, Hugh, we both know how Antonia Brechin’s case is going to pan out.’

  ‘Yes, it’s going to pan out with her being convicted. Now goodbye.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you’re going to be like that—’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Towards a fellow professional. A brother in law, so to speak.’

  ‘You’re no relative of mine professionally or by any other connection, thankfully. You’re a chancer who thinks that by stalking and harassing me I’ll change my mind and drop the charge against his client.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘No!’ He became aware of raising his voice and looked around. ‘Why you even thought we could discuss business here, I don’t know,’ he hissed. ‘It’s a public place.’

  Around about then I thought my biceps sufficiently curled, especially the left one which wasn’t as keen on curling as the right and had started to complain. I set the weights down at my feet, whipped Ogilvie’s towel out of his hand and wiped my face with it. ‘Five minutes and I’ll go and never mention the case to you again. Ever.’

  Ogilvie grabbed back the towel. ‘Promise?’

  I took him by the arm and led him over to a water cooler situated near a rack of brightly coloured kettle bells, their cheery hues a cunning attempt to conceal how alarmingly heavy they were. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘we both know that drug reports are never available for the trial first time around.’

  Ogilvie draped the towel across a shoulder and helped himself to a paper cone of chilled H2O. ‘I’ll admit there are occasional delays at the moment due to government cuts.’

  ‘And if there is no forensic drug report, there’s no proof that what my client is said to have possessed—’

  ‘Make that, did possess.’

  ‘—was actually an illegal substance. No proof, no conviction.’

  Ogilvie threw his head back and poured the water down his throat. ‘Robbie . . .’ He wiped his mouth with a corner of the red towel. ‘You do know that I am the Procurator Fiscal, don’t you?’

  I was prepared to concede the reality of his elevated status, if not that he deserved it.

  He wagged the little paper cone at me. ‘Then I think it’s also safe for you to assume that I know how one goes about establishing the proof of controlled substances in a drugs trial.’

  ‘Good, then let’s also assume that
the forensic report won’t arrive in time for the trial—’

  ‘In which case I would move to adjourn.’

  ‘Precisely.’ My turn to drink some water. ‘But the way I see it happening, is that you move to adjourn in such a half-hearted, pathetic manner that the Sheriff refuses the motion, bingo the case is deserted and my client takes a walk.’

  ‘O-kay . . .’ Ogilvie said. ‘I see only three problems with that scenario.’ He needed to rehydrate some more before he could get to the first. ‘One. What if I don’t want to make a pathetic, half-hearted motion to adjourn?’

  ‘Just be yourself and you’ll do fine.’

  ‘Two. Why would any sheriff refuse a motion to adjourn at the first calling of a trial?’

  ‘Because whatever sheriff they bring in will be bending over backwards to do Brechin a favour.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Sheriffs are only human.’ I’d certainly heard they started out that way. ‘You could easily get a sheriff who doesn’t like Bert Brechin, holds a grudge or something. It’s not only you defence lawyers he’s rubbed up the wrong way over the years.’

  I disagreed. A sheriff was a sheriff. Male or female, young or old, their brains all came out of the same bucket. ‘Sorry, Hugh. Trust me on this. Whoever they rope in to do the trial will be only too happy to have a senior Sheriff like Albert Brechin indebted to them. And what easier and more face-saving way to ingratiate themselves than to let his granddaughter off on a technicality? Who could criticise them for strictly applying the rules of procedure?’

  I thought Ogilvie might mull that over for a little longer than the time it took him to crumple his paper cup.

  ‘Three,’ he said. ‘I’ve already got the forensic report and it says cocaine. Fifty grams of it.’

  ‘Fifty!’ I tried not to say out loud, but couldn’t help it.

  He lobbed the crushed cone into the little blue plastic bin at my side. ‘Oh, yes. And every one of those fifty grams is as pure as the driven snow.’

  21