Good News, Bad News

by WHS McIntyre

  Gentleman Jake Turpie? It was too much for my breakfast-deprived brain to handle that early on a Sunday morning.

  With a farewell to Ellen, my final task was to tell Sammy I was leaving. He was still sitting bent over the card table, filling out an insurance proposal form when I went outside. Freddy was hovering around, smoking nervously.

  ‘How long is all this going to take?’ he asked.

  ‘The policy proposal will be ready for the three of you to sign in ten minutes,’ Sammy said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to have to draw up a partnership agreement as well, and it’ll need to be done right. We’re going to have to meet up again. How about same time next Saturday? You can all sign and then after that . . . Well . . .’

  ‘Then after that, what?’ Freddy flicked a curl of ash from the end of his cigarette and watched it float to the ground where it drifted and tumbled across the concrete slabs.

  I looked at the kitchen door from where the sound of sizzling bacon was music. ‘Sammy means that, after that, nature and time will take its toll,’ I said.

  Freddy took a final drag from his cigarette and pinged the stub at my feet, exploding a shower of orange sparks. ‘Then the sooner that bitch is dead, the better.’ He turned around to meet Jake’s fist full in the face. Freddy stood there for a moment, head pointing at the ground, eyes looking up at the sky. His legs buckled. He reached out to grab hold of something that wasn’t there and toppled sideways.

  To say he didn’t land all that heavily is to say that at least he didn’t crack any slabs when gravity eventually brought him to rest. I rolled him over into the recovery position. After a minute or two he groaned and managed to sit up, supporting himself by one hand planted on the ground while with the other he clutched his nose, red oozing between his fingers. If Freddy had known what was good for him, he’d have just sat there and bled. Instead, he glared up at Jake and determinedly, if unsteadily, rolled onto both knees and began to haul himself up on the back of one of the chairs. The moment he was upright Jake would knock him down again. I stepped in between the two. Sammy shifted his chair, pulling the card table along with him. Once out of the danger zone and well away from blood splashes he continued filling out the proposal form. The man was a pro.

  ‘Time to go, Freddy,’ I said. ‘Be here next Saturday at eight. You can sign the papers and then head back to Prague. Sammy will do the rest.’ Keeping Jake-side of him at all times, I led Freddy to the corner of the building, where, with a gentle shove, I sent him, dripping blood, in the direction of his rental car. It took him a while to fumble in his pocket for the keys but soon he had the engine started and I followed him down the track.

  And that was that. Job done. I was finally free. Jake would get his money, Freddy would reunite with his woman in Bohemia, Sammy would collect a handsome cash pay-off for his troubles, and all Ellen had to do was die.

  As for me? I had a fried egg and prosciutto roll to look forward to. Somehow, at that precise moment, it was enough.

  47

  ‘What happened to that Parma ham that Malky brought yesterday?’ I asked, removing my head from the fridge after a brief fact-finding mission.

  My dad was at the big Belfast sink, scrubbing at a set of golf irons. Tina was kneeling on a chair at the kitchen table, swirling a paintbrush around and around in a jam jar of murky water with Bouncer looking on, a splash of bright blue paint on one of his ears.

  ‘Eaten,’ my dad said, taking a pitching wedge and drying it on an old tea towel. ‘No-one knew where you were. Up and away at the crack of dawn. Sorry if we were supposed to know you’d be back and looking for breakfast.’

  ‘Joanna and me had fried egg on a roll,’ Tina said, not looking up. ‘I had crispy bacon on mine. There’s none left for you,’ she added for the avoidance of doubt.

  ‘Where is Joanna?’

  ‘House hunting,’ my dad said. ‘And I’ve a game of golf to get to.’

  ‘When did she leave?’

  ‘Twenty minutes ago. She tried to phone you, but you’d left your phone on the kitchen table.’ He dropped the club into his golf bag and started on an eight-iron. ‘I think you should know that she’s not best pleased.’

  ‘Joanna wants to kill you,’ Tina said. ‘Will she get into trouble for that?’

  ‘No, pet,’ my dad said. ‘We’ll see she gets herself a proper lawyer.’

  My phone buzzed. Bouncer jumped onto all fours, ears cocked. I checked the display. Six missed calls, one from Joanna and five from a number I didn’t recognise. It wasn’t unusual for the police to call with news of an arrest, but if I didn’t answer they always left a message.

  ‘It’s been doing that for the past ten minutes,’ my dad said. ‘I answered it once, but whoever it was hung up.’

  I dialled the number. It was answered immediately. ‘Hello Robbie? Is that you?’

  I couldn’t quite place the voice.

  ‘It’s Ted. Ted Hawke. Joanna’s—’

  ‘Hi Ted. I’d been thinking about giving you a call. Looks like you beat me to it.’

  ‘Robbie, it’s very important we talk.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  ‘Don’t say anything over the phone. When can we meet up?’

  My dad checked his watch, threw the tea towel over the heads of the remaining irons and gave the bunch a quick rub before ramming them into his golf bag. ‘I’ve a tee-time in half an hour at Kingsfield and I’ve still got Davie to pick up in Philpstoun. I don’t know when Joanna’s coming back, so the bairn’s all yours. Why don’t you take her and the hound out for some exercise?’ Giggling, Tina tried in vain to fend off his bristly kiss. ‘It’s not good for the pair of them to be cooped up on a day like this.’

  He grabbed a blue windcheater from a coat hook on the back door, then he, his fourteen golf clubs and one highly dubious handicap, were gone.

  ‘It’s difficult at the moment, Ted. I’m childminding. How about we—’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll come to you. Today. Now.’

  Tina came over carrying an A3 piece of paper, dripping a rainbow of paint across the kitchen floor and the dog that was padding by her side. She held it up to me for evaluation. ‘Very nice,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Ted said.

  ‘I was talking to Tina.’

  ‘Who’s Tina? What have you told her?’

  ‘She’s my daughter and I’ve told her she’s just painted a lovely picture.’

  I could hear the sound of exasperation on the other end of the line. ‘Look, Robbie, I need to speak to you urgently. Where are you? Just give me your postcode and I’ll punch it into the Sat Nav. I can leave right now.’

  ‘I’m at home. The postcode is—’

  ‘Hold on. Is Joanna there? I can’t meet you if Joanna’s going to be around.’

  I didn’t bother to say that Joanna wasn’t with me, because she could return at any time. In any case, I could guess what Ted wanted to see me about and I was as keen as he obviously was to ensure that his niece remained blissfully unaware.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How about I meet you at the Kelpies? If you’re leaving from Edinburgh, just batter down the M9 until you come across a couple of thirty-metre-high horses’ heads. You can’t miss them. I’ll meet you there in an hour. How’s that?’

  It was fine. So anxious was Ted to see me, I had the feeling I could have asked to meet him abseiling from the Falkirk Wheel and he’d have arrived with rope and harness.

  I hung Tina’s latest creation on the kitchen wall over the top of the last one she’d painted which was now a crinkly sheet of streaks and faded brush strokes. Ten minutes later the three of us were in the car heading west. Leaving the motorway at Grangemouth, we continued along the bypass road and parked in the overflow car park at Falkirk Stadium. From there we walked through the Helix Park, the journey being temporarily diverted while Tina and Bouncer took a detour to the splash zone, where nozzles sunk into the ground randomly spurted jets of water here and there, but mostly onto my daughter and her dog.r />
  After that, I walked with wet dog and soaking child a further kilometre, past the great lawn, across the wetland boardwalk, following the Forth and Clyde Canal to its eastern end where it met the River Carron. Ted was already waiting for us in a checked shirt and slacks, a finger through the loop in the collar of a tan corduroy jacket that was slung over his shoulder.

  He and I shook hands beneath the two enormous stainless steel structures, each shining brightly in the sunlight of a June midday, one rearing its mighty head skywards, the other staring down at us disapprovingly.

  For all his obvious concern, Ted managed a smile. ‘Is this your daughter, the artist?’ he asked, and, before I could say yes, the smile was gone, replaced by a worried expression stretched tightly across his broad features. ‘I understand you’ve been talking to Freya Linkwood. What did she tell you?’

  ‘That it was you who arranged the supply of cocaine to Antonia Brechin.’ The Bush and How Not to Beat About It by Robert A. Munro.

  Ted pursed his lips and nodded his head a few times, slowly. ‘What else?’

  What else? What else could there be? A tug at my elbow. It had taken Tina precisely thirty seconds to admire the Kelpies and a further thirty to locate an ice cream outlet. I told her we’d get some on the way back, gave her Bouncer’s lead to hold and she squelched off in her sodden sandals with me yelling after her to keep well away from the water.

  Ted drew closer. The park was busy with tourists, but there was no-one in our immediate vicinity, certainly no-one who would have been interested to listen in on our discussion when they were standing metres away from the world’s largest equine sculptures. ‘What has Antonia said about me so far?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ I said.

  Tina had lost the end of Bouncer’s lead and the dog had thought it should come over and stand by me before giving itself a shake. I could tell that Ted was growing more and more frustrated with each interruption.

  ‘What about Joanna? What does she know?’

  ‘I haven’t told her, and I’m not planning to.’

  ‘It’ll come out in court, though, won’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Antonia is refusing to reveal who gave her the drugs.’

  ‘But she could?’

  ‘It’s possible she could,’ I said, though not if I had anything to do with it.

  ‘And if she does?’

  ‘If she reveals her supplier there’s a good chance the Crown would drop the prosecution.’

  ‘They would do that? Drop the charge if she told them who her supplier was?’

  Was he kidding? If Hugh Ogilvie discovered who Antonia’s supplier was, he’d bite my hand off for a deal. In fact, Ogilvie would probably be happy to bin the case against all three trainees if he thought he could take the scalp of a partner at one of Scotland’s top corporate law firms.

  ‘Then that’s what she should do,’ Ted said. ‘It was stupid. I don’t know what came over me. I suppose I was showing off, not acting my age.’

  It was honourable of him to offer to sacrifice himself, but I couldn’t let him do it. The person who had physically delivered the drugs was Toffee McCowan. I couldn’t let word of his involvement escape. Antonia Brechin might be looking at the loss of her career. Some people would be set to lose a lot more, and without anaesthetic.

  ‘What if I told them who my supplier was? Would they do me the same kind of deal?’ Ted asked.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s such a great idea going up the chain of suppliers,’ I said. ‘The links at the top don’t like it.’

  Ted frowned. ‘I understand. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ So he said. I preferred not to run the risk of the cops prising it open. ‘My contact is an old friend. He knows that I’d never give them his name.’

  An old friend? I hardly thought the managing partner of Fraser Forrest & Hawke and a rum-soaked old sea dog would navigate the same social circles.

  ‘Your contact for the cocaine?’ I said. ‘Can I take it he’s not a wee weather-beaten guy who looks like he might know how to crack open a bottle of Navy Rum?’

  Tina held onto the crook of my arm and swung on it. ‘Can we get ice cream yet?’

  Ted unslung his jacket and pulled out a calfskin wallet. He extracted a twenty pound note and handed it down to Tina. ‘Get us all one,’ he said. ‘The dog too.’

  The cash was out of Ted’s hand in a flash and Tina was off and running. You couldn’t teach that. It was all in the genes.

  ‘That’s not quite how I’d describe him,’ Ted said, getting back to the subject at hand and the identity of his drug dealer. ‘Quentin’s an old school chum. I’d describe him as more of a—’

  ‘Quentin?’ I didn’t know anything of Uncle Ted-to-be’s schooldays but, during my own, Quentins had been pretty thin on the ground.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ironic, isn’t it. Antonia’s father. Quentin Brechin.’

  48

  Suddenly I felt a lot better. Quentin Brechin, drug dealer. Who’d have thought it? It was the quiet ones you had to watch out for. Sitting there in his dad’s conservatory yesterday morning, giving it, ‘Plead guilty, Antonia. Tell the truth and shame the devil,’ when all the time the drugs his daughter had been caught with had come, albeit circuitously, from him. I’d see how Sheriff Brechin and his daughter-in-law liked those apples. Complain about me for defective representation, would they?

  It was a long, wet journey back to the car for some of us. Tina, now wearing my jumper, sat chittering in the back seat with a damp dog across her lap.

  Back at the cottage the front door was ajar. I was sure I’d locked up before leaving and my dad wouldn’t be home yet. Even if he’d holed out at the eighteenth he’d still have a few more to sink at the nineteenth. It had to be Joanna returned from a hard day’s house hunting. It wasn’t. It was Stan Blandy. He was sitting in my dad’s favourite armchair, a folded newspaper across his lap, tapping his teeth with a pen and making a show of studying the racing pages. Toffee McCowan stood nearby, a hand shoved in his trouser pocket. He looked pale and weak and struggled to arrange his features into an apologetic grimace when I entered the room. I retreated back into the small hallway to shepherd Tina into her room before she started asking a lot of awkward questions. I retrieved a towel from the bathroom and told her to dry herself and put on some fresh clothes. After that I shoved the dog in beside her and closed the door.

  Back in the living room the scene hadn’t changed. ‘Hope you don’t mind, Robbie, we let ourselves in,’ Stan said, looking up from the newspaper. ‘Very trusting of you to leave a key under the plant pot.’ He set the paper down on the arm of the chair and balanced the pen on top of it. ‘While we’ve been waiting, Toffee’s been telling me a few things. Isn’t that right Toffee?’

  Tina reappeared with Bouncer by her side. She wasn’t looking very dry, and was dressed in a random assortment of clothes. When she saw the two strange men she caught her breath. Bouncer sensed her apprehension. Every fibre in the wee dog’s body tensed, and a warning rumble escaped between its bared teeth. Perhaps Jake had taught it something after all.

  Another figure appeared in the doorway leading through from the kitchen. I recognised him from our warehouse meeting. Same shaved scalp, same razor scar, same come-ahead expression. When he saw Tina he lunged forward with a growl to give her a fright. It was too much for Bouncer. The dog leapt through the air straight at the man’s neck. He wasn’t a big dog, but he was solid and compact and struck scar-face square-on, catching him off balance. The man clutched for the frame of the door. Fingers slipping, he stumbled and fell backwards. Bouncer was all over him in an instant, snarling and snapping. Scar-face scrambled along the kitchen floor aiming blows at the dog, none of them seeming to connect or at least not sufficiently so to make a blind bit of difference. One arm shielding his face the man reached into his pocket. I knew what he was searching for in there.

  Tina ran forward. ‘Bouncer!’ she yelled, ‘Come here!’ With one bound th
e animal jumped off the man and ran to my daughter’s side, tail wagging, tongue hanging out the side of its mouth like it had all been a game.

  On his feet now, lock-back in hand, the scar on his face showing white against red, the man shuffled forward. Growling, Bouncer planted his paws. Teeth like knives, ears pinned back, the dog showed no signs of retreat. I stepped between them.

  ‘Tina, take Bouncer to your room and don’t come out until I tell you.’ The tone of my voice was enough for her not to need telling again.

  Meanwhile, Stan was finding the whole violent episode mildly amusing. ‘Put the chib away and wait outside,’ he told his associate.

  ‘Sorry about that, Stan,’ I said, trying to match the big man’s casual approach to the situation. ‘Now, do you want to tell me why you’re here? My dad will be back soon and, if you think his dog’s crabbit, wait until he finds you’ve been sitting in his favourite chair reading his paper.’

  Stan stood up. ‘This is a friendly visit, Robbie. I’m not here to lean on anybody,’ he said in the quiet, reassuring way dentists tell you, “this won’t hurt a bit”. ‘It’s just that I’ve been hearing things. Things that I don’t like.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘I got a call from somebody this morning. Somebody I haven’t heard from in a long time.’

  ‘Is this twenty questions or are you going to tell me who you’re talking about?’

  ‘You’re his daughter’s lawyer.’

  ‘Quentin Brechin?’

  Stan’s big face relaxed into a smile. ‘Me and Quentin go way back. He was working on the docks when I set up my little import, export business. He helped me with some legal stuff when I was getting started. Years later after he decided he was going to be an artist, he got himself into debt and came looking for a loan and so, naturally, I helped him out. Things took off, and when he started exhibiting across Europe, I asked him to help me out and we came to an arrangement.’

  ‘Exporting art, importing cocaine?’

  ‘Only until he’d paid me back. I don’t like long-term business associations. It’s dangerous to tread the same water. You need to swim about or you end up in a net.’