Good News, Bad News

by WHS McIntyre

  I got to my feet. Joanna jumped to hers, the empty mug falling out of her lap and onto the floor.

  ‘A dog? Where? In Tina’s room?’ She glanced about, presumably looking for a weapon. Seeing none she pushed me in the direction of my daughter’s bedroom.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, raising my hands in surrender, ‘the dog is something I can explain.’

  41

  Someone else who had a lot of explaining to do was Toffee McCowan. How had the fingerprints of one of Antonia’s co-accused been found on a packet of drugs in the boot of his car?

  I had no means of tracking him down, and I wasn’t sure how helpful he would have been even if I had.

  I was in two minds. From one angle the news of Freya’s dabs on a bag of drugs was good. It was evidence to support a defence that she, not Antonia Brechin, was responsible for supplying the party cocaine. As reasonable doubts went it was a cracker. The bad news was I couldn’t use it in court without fear of implicating Toffee, and that would not go down at all well with Stan Blandy; nonetheless, the more I thought about it the more I realised that even if I couldn’t use the actual evidence, perhaps just the threat of it might achieve the same result.

  Andy and the other legal assistants shared open-plan offices on the first floor of the big glass building up at Quartermile, each workstation separated from the next by a shoulder-height partition. There was a water cooler in one corner, a coffee machine in another, and in between a lot of young, well-dressed people staring at computer screens.

  Finding a meeting room wasn’t easy. Andy didn’t get to see clients unless accompanying one of the partners, on which occasions he was expected to input only when outputted to.

  ‘I can give you ten minutes,’ he said as, having climbed the stairs to the next floor, he led me along a walkway lined with abstract bronze sculptures, artificial flowers and the occasional David Hockney print. ‘I’ve booked the conference room, but I’ll need to release it by three o’clock.’

  ‘I don’t need a conference room,’ I said. ‘I’d be happy enough to discuss your client’s drug-dealing activities out here in the corridor. It’s just that I wouldn’t want her dad, that is your boss, to hear the news before you did.’

  ‘Would you keep your voice down?’ Andy said. We came to a door with a small brushed-aluminium sign on it. He slid the sign from ‘vacant’ to ‘engaged’ and ushered me into a room. It wasn’t all that big. It wouldn’t have held the entire population of Linlithgow.

  I sat down in one of the many identical chairs ranked around an enormous solid wood table. Andy remained standing. ‘Robbie, if you’re here to try and make my client admit to something she hasn’t done, so that—’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Nobody wants your client to admit to anything she hasn’t done.’

  ‘Yes. You do. That was why you came through to see me last time.’

  ‘Well, things change. The reason I’ve come all this way is to give you some news.’

  ‘Good or bad?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether you’re me or whether you’re you.’

  ‘Okay, what’s my news?’

  ‘It’s bad. One of my clients, a drugs courier, you don’t know him, but he was arrested last Friday.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The cops found a package containing fifty grams of cocaine in his car.’

  Andy checked his watch. ‘What’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘They can’t link the package to my client.’

  ‘It was found in his car. Isn’t that a pretty good link?’

  ‘Not as good a link as having someone else’s fingerprints all over it.’ That elicited no response from Andy. I was going to have to spell it out to him. ‘Freya Linkwood’s fingerprints.’

  Andy emitted a short, throaty laugh. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You don’t have to take my word for it. Phone Joanna. She’s working at the PF’s again. She told me about it.’

  Andy sat down on a chair next to mine, placed the heels of both hands against his brow and leaned back to stare up at the recessed ceiling lights, groaning softly. This went on for a while until suddenly he removed his hands and sat up straight. ‘Why . . . ?’ He tapped his forehead and then pointed a finger at me. ‘Are you telling me this? Why aren’t you using it for your defence? What more do you need? You call Freya as a witness, she’s already admitted possession of the coke in her flat. All you need to do is put it to her that, since her fingerprints are on another bag of coke found somewhere else, that it’s her and not Antonia Brechin who’s the dealer.’

  What Andy had suggested was exactly what had first sprung to my mind, until I’d realised that when Freya was eventually questioned they’d ask for her supplier and she’d put them onto Toffee. That would resurrect the case that had been no pro’d against him and make Stan Blandy a very unhappy man at having been lied to.

  ‘Well? Why not?’ Andy asked. ‘It’s a sound enough defence, isn’t it? Why are you telling me?’ I’d taught the boy well. If only to be highly suspicious of everything I did. ‘What’s your angle, Robbie?’

  This was quickly developing into a very delicate situation and, as such, no time for me to start dabbling in the truth, at least not the whole truth. ‘We’re friends, Andy. I wanted to do you a good turn. Tip you off. Do I have to have an angle?’

  ‘Robbie, you’ve got more angles than medieval Mercia. Out with it. You’ve got a plan or you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Has Freya signed the affidavit?’

  ‘Not yet, but it’s drafted.’

  ‘Tell her not to sign it. The Crown can’t force her to. When she’s called to give evidence, I’ll put it to her that she was the person who supplied Antonia Brechin with the drugs.’

  ‘And you’d expect her to admit that?’

  ‘All she has to say is that she doesn’t want to answer the question in case it incriminates her. That together with her admitted possession should be enough for me to spin a reasonable doubt.’

  I didn’t think Andy gave that suggestion the consideration it deserved. ‘And if she refuses?’

  ‘I’ll lodge the drugs and the sandwich bag—’

  ‘Sandwich bag?’ Andy scoffed. ‘The drugs were in a sandwich bag? Freya could have dropped it in the street. Someone could have picked it up later and used it for keeping drugs in.’

  ‘You could always try that as a defence, Andy. Although you do realise we’re talking about an ordinary plastic sandwich bag, not one from the delicatessen department of Harvey Nicks. Once I lodge it and the fingerprint report as defence productions, your girl’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.’

  There was a knock at the door. Andy got up and went to see who it was. ‘Freya . . .’ He opened the door wide and stepped back to allow her in.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘It’s just that when I saw you and Mr Munro together downstairs I wondered if you were discussing the court case. I’ve been checking round all the consulting rooms to see where you were.’

  If I’d been asked what I expected someone called Freya to look like, I’d have said tall, athletic, blonde hair, quite possibly worn in plaits, and great cheek bones. Freya Linkwood was all of those things, aside from the plaits. Her hair was cut severely short.

  She looked from Andy to me with an air of suspicion and then glanced casually around the otherwise uninhabited room. ‘So what’s going on?’

  Andy pulled a chair out for her. She didn’t sit down.

  ‘Robbie’s come to bring me some news. He says that on Friday the police stopped and searched a car. They found a sandwich bag full of cocaine. Your fingerprints were on it.’

  Freya sank into the chair.

  ‘All you have to do is refuse to testify and no-one need know about the bag or your fingerprints.’

  ‘How can I refuse to testify?’

  ‘Say you don’t want to self-incriminate.’

  ‘And
let you make it look to the jury like I’m the drug dealer?’ she said, face flushed. I’d seen happier Vikings. The young woman took a moment to compose herself before turning to Andy. ‘What do you think I should do?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can only advise you to tell the truth.’

  For once I agreed.

  ‘Okay then.’ Freya shifted in her chair, sat up straight. ‘You really want the truth?’

  The way she said that, staring defiantly up at me through eyes glazed with tears, made me strongly suspect I perhaps no longer did.

  ‘This man came to the door of the flat one night when I was by myself. He was old with a face like a prune, like he’d fallen asleep under a sun lamp and woken up twenty years later.’ Freya attempted a laugh at what was an excellent description of Colin ‘Toffee’ McCowan. ‘He said he had a package for someone and asked if I was Antonia. I told him I wasn’t and that she was out, but he handed it to me and stupidly I took it. It was a plastic bag. I suppose it might have been a sandwich bag. There were two other bags inside it, all scrunched up with a knot at one end. I didn’t know what it was at first . . .’ Freya reached out into the centre of the table and pulled over a decanter of water and a glass tumbler. ‘Then suddenly I realised.’ She poured herself a drink and took two or three short sips before continuing. ‘I told him to take the drugs and go. He said it was okay, that they’d been paid for, and when I said I wanted nothing to do with it he wasn’t very pleased. That’s when Antonia arrived. She said we had to take the cocaine because it was a gift. She told me to take one of the small bags and I did. I gave the big bag back to the man. We didn’t know what to do with the stuff, so we put it into a box on the coffee table in the living room. Nobody touched it after that, and that’s where the cops must have found it.’

  Just as Freya had grown less upset and more confident with every word she spoke, Andy looked less worried and a lot more smug.

  ‘That clear enough for you, Robbie?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t want to get Antonia in any trouble,’ Freya said. ‘It wasn’t really her fault.’

  ‘You’ve said enough, Freya,’ Andy said.

  Not for my purposes she hadn’t. ‘What do you mean, not really her fault?’

  ‘I’m sure it was all down to a daft discussion we had,’ Freya said. ‘Quite a few lawyers meet up at the Aspen Lounge on Princes Street on a Friday for an after-work drink.’ Freya played with the tumbler, holding it by the rim, turning the heavy base around and around on the polished table. ‘Antonia was there with a group from Fraser Forrest and Hawke. We started talking about what we’d do to celebrate if one of us won at the Scotia Awards. We decided we’d have a party at the flat. Someone, I can’t even remember who, mentioned cocaine and champagne. It was a joke. I said my dad would lay on the champagne if I won. Antonia’s boss heard us and said he’d supply the coke if it was her. It was all a big laugh.’

  Antonia’s boss? She couldn’t mean Ted Hawke. Not Uncle Ted.

  She did.

  ‘I thought Ted was joking.’ Freya set down the tumbler. ‘Evidently he wasn’t.’

  42

  I had a trial on Friday that lasted well into the afternoon and helped distract me from the respective plights of Antonia Brechin and Ellen Fletcher. Over the recent days and weeks I’d spent so much time thinking about their cases that I’d almost forgotten another client who was also extremely worried about her future.

  It should have been a big year for Heather Somerville, a graduation in July, followed by a teaching career starting in August, and, before either of those, the small matter of a June wedding. But she hadn’t swung by to drop me off an invitation.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ I said. A man is usually on safe ground with a statement like that to a member of the opposite sex, especially one who is all set to squeeze into a wedding dress. I hadn’t expected it to lead to tears. I pushed a box of tissues across the desk at her and waited a few minutes for Heather to pull herself together. And then a few more.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sniffing. ‘I suppose I should be thankful that all the worry has saved me from having to diet.’ She smiled a pale, sickly little smile. ‘I was wondering if you had any news about my appeal.’

  I told her the appeal papers had been lodged the same day she’d given me instructions to proceed, and the hearing on adjustments had taken place nearly two weeks ago. I’d be receiving Brechin’s final Stated Case very soon, and it would be sent on to the Summary Appeals Court. ‘An Appeal Sheriff will look at it and decide whether it has merit enough to go forward to a full hearing.’

  ‘What if it doesn’t?’

  ‘If it fails the first sift we can try again. If it fails a second time,’ I said, anticipating her next question, ‘I’m afraid that’s pretty much that. The conviction will stand.’

  ‘What do you think my chances are?’

  What I thought was that we’d been through all this on her last visit when she’d brought her hard-of-understanding fiancé with her. On this occasion, she’d left him in the waiting room.

  ‘Until I’ve read the final Stated Case, I can’t say with any degree of certainty,’ I said, ‘but the prospects for a successful appeal aren’t good. They never were. You know that.’

  Heather closed her eyes, clamped the tissue to her nose and nodded.

  ‘Have you made enquiries with the General Teaching Council about what will happen if the conviction stands?’ I asked.

  She had. The good news was that the assault hadn’t involved a child. The bad news was that it was, nonetheless, a crime of violence and classified as domestic assault. If the conviction remained on her record, she’d have to wait at least two years before she could apply for admission.

  ‘They say the conviction will stay on my record forever,’ she said. ‘Teaching is an exempt profession under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and a conviction is never spent. It’s not going to help me find employment, even if I am admitted as a suitable person.’

  It was fast approaching five o’clock. I had letters to sign, and Grace-Mary would need to leave soon to catch the last post. No matter how much I sympathised with my client’s predicament, she was just another casualty of the Crown’s zero tolerance policy and Sheriff Albert Brechin’s zero tolerance attitude.

  ‘Where’s the wedding going to be?’ I asked, hoping to lighten the mood and generally wind up the session.

  ‘St Michael’s, a week tomorrow. It’s an early start: eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Then that’s what your mind should be on,’ I said. ‘Not a conviction for giving your boyfriend a clip around the ear. Let’s wait and see how the appeal goes. Even if it doesn’t go well, who knows? Maybe the GTC will understand what you were going through at the time. It might help if you introduce them to your fiancé.’

  She managed to smile at my attempt at a joke. With a final dab at each eye, she tossed the tissue in the waste paper basket and rose to her feet.

  ‘Rest assured, I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything,’ I said, walking her out of the room.

  ‘If it’s good news I want to know right away. If it’s bad, wait until after the wedding,’ she said, as her fiancé, hearing our voices, came out of the waiting room to meet us in the corridor. ‘That way . . .’ on tiptoe she reached up and kissed him on the cheek, ‘when I kill Bobby at least I’ll get a widow’s pension.’

  I wished them both all the best. Big Bobby might not have been the brightest, but my client was marrying an honest man, one who knew how to take an oath and stick to it, even if in Sheriff Brechin’s witness box had been the worst place to do it.

  43

  I arrived home to find Bouncer lying in the driveway, rolling around trying to catch his tail and my dad and future father-in-law standing at the front of the cottage, staring up at the roof.

  Bouncer stopped trying to bite his tail, started wagging it instead and came over, jumping up at me.

  ‘How’s it going, Robbie?’ Jim said, shaking my hand. �
�Your dad asked me to swing by the first time I was passing and take a look at his flashing. There’s been a bit of storm damage over the winter. I suppose Joanna told you all about the problems with your own house plans?’ He screwed up his face in sympathy. ‘It’s a lot of cash to spend on not much house. You’d never get your money back on it if you sold it any time soon. Like in the next twenty years.’

  ‘It was a nice idea,’ I said, ‘but we’ll just have to think again. Lower our sights.’

  ‘Something will come up,’ Jim said. ‘What’s for you will not go by you, and I’m always here to help out in any way I can. Just give me a shout.’

  Next up was my dad. ‘About this dog.’ On cue Jake Turpie’s former apprentice guard dog padded over to him, tail wagging, gazing up adoringly at the old man. ‘How long is it planning on staying here?’ he said, as though Bouncer was considering taking out a lease on the premises.

  ‘I don’t know. How long do dogs live?’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, no. You can play the Good Samaritan if you like, but don’t start thinking you’re papping the mutt onto me.’

  ‘The Good Samaritan didn’t help dogs,’ I said, bending to rub Bouncer’s fuzzy head. ‘And you’ve got tons of room for him here.’

  ‘I never asked you to get me it.’

  ‘Consider him a present.’

  ‘No chance. When you go, it goes.’

  The roar of an engine heralded Joanna’s return from work. She managed to squeeze her sports car past her dad’s works van and park up the side of the cottage, blocking my car in. She came around to the front of the house and gave her dad a hug. From inside Tina appeared at the front door, followed by Malky. My brother’s football phone-in radio show had finished for the close season and he’d come through early for his tea prior to our regular Friday night five-a-side session.