Good News, Bad News

by WHS McIntyre

  There was a long pause before Jake spoke again. ‘How long does that life insurance on Freddy last for?’

  ‘As long as someone keeps paying the monthly premium, I suppose.’

  Jake sighed. ‘Eighty.’ He held out a hand and I shook it. He didn’t let go. ‘Plus the three grand you owe me for the new motor.’ He let go and nudged my smashed phone along the table at me. ‘I’m a busy man. I can’t sit about here all day watching you bleed.’

  I got through to Joanna on my second attempt. She arrived ten minutes later, flustered and worried, to find a scene of devastation.

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ Jake said to her, as, having traversed the mountain of broken slates, my fiancée burst in through the kitchen door, glowering at the man in the filthy red shirt. ‘It was a pure accident.’

  Joanna looked at me for confirmation.

  ‘Just one of those things,’ I said. ‘How’d it go with Heather Somerville?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Tears?’

  ‘Floods.’

  ‘Hugs?’

  ‘You think your leg’s bad? My ribs are killing me.’

  Tina bounded into the kitchen with Bouncer alongside, trailing shards of broken slate. Hands on hips, head to one side, she looked at me sitting there on a kitchen chair, leg resting on the table, the leg of my jeans rolled up past my knee, blood oozing through the tea towel that was wrapped around my lower leg, and forensically assessed the situation. ‘Have you hurt your leg, Dad?’

  ‘Yes I have, and now I’m going to see the doctor to make it better.’

  Using the back of the chair for support, I hoisted myself onto my uninjured leg and hopped to the back door, Tina leading the way, Bouncer by her side.

  ‘What about the dog?’ Joanna asked, when my daughter disappeared out of sight. ‘Did you manage to speak to Jake about it before the house fell on you? Is he going to take it back?’

  Tina and Bouncer reappeared with instructions for us to hurry up.

  ‘Jake’s not keen,’ I said.

  ‘How not keen?’

  ‘It’s not happening,’ Jake said, following us out of the door.

  ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ Joanna took my arm and laid it across her shoulder to support me,’ but you know we can’t keep a dog at the new flat, and while that’s good news for me, it looks like you’ve got some bad news to give Tina.’

  ‘No,’ I said, as together we hobbled our way to the car. ‘For Tina, and especially Bouncer, I have some very good news indeed.’

  Author’s Note

  Some readers may notice a similarity in the names of the fictional Sheriff Albert Vincent Brechin and the entirely non-fictional Sheriff Albert Vincent Sheehan, erstwhile of Falkirk Sheriff Court, and before whom I appeared on an almost daily basis for around twenty years. I’d like to put the record straight on this.

  While I do occasionally merge fact with fiction, so far as the Sheriff Brechin/Sheehan situation is concerned, other than certain shared mannerisms, such as the notorious eyebrow, which the non-fictional Sheriff could raise to dizzying heights during moments of extreme incredulity (most often when being addressed by the defence), that is where any similarity ends. It is true that Sheriff Sheehan, like his fictional counterpart, was not one to, as we say, miss-and-hit-the-wall when it came to sentencing, but a fairer trial judge it would be difficult to find, and one more prone than many of his brother and sister sheriffs to reasonable doubts.

  Furthermore, unlike Sheriff Brechin, Sheriff Sheehan had a sympathetic side – some would say just as the Nile has a source. However, many will remember his high regard for the military. Certainly we defence lawyers were well aware of it, and whenever faced with a particularly hopeless case the first line of enquiry made was whether the accused had any connection, no matter how loose, with Her Majesty’s armed forces.

  I remember appearing for an elderly gentleman in the late 1990s. He had been charged with driving without a valid licence or insurance. Unlike today, such cases were treated seriously and merited an appearance in the Sheriff Court where, unless one had an exceptionally good reason, Sheriff Sheehan was apt to follow the now largely disregarded opinion of the Appeal Court that such offenders should be heavily fined and disqualified.

  Assuming that my client, an elderly man, had merely forgotten to renew his three-yearly driving licence, I asked him when he had last held a licence or insurance.

  ‘1945,’ came the reply. ‘When we were demobbed, they told us to report to the Town Hall where they gave us a green card and said we could drive.’

  I fastened onto the word ‘demobbed’ like a limpet mine to the hull of a Panzer IV. Further interrogation revealed that this little grey-haired man had served in the 3rd Battalion of the Scots Guards and on D-Day landed at Juno beach where, as a tank driver, he’d taken part in Operation Bluecoat, which saw the most concentrated infantry tank action of WWII.

  When his case was called before Sheriff Sheehan, and doing my best to ignore the reason we were there, namely the half-century or so my client had been driving without either a valid licence or motor insurance, I proceeded to narrate his war record, while Sheriff Sheehan listened, head bowed and solemn, staring at the bench, usually a sign of impending doom.

  When I’d completed my plea-in-mitigation, such as it was, and fearing the worst, I was surprised to see the Sheriff look over my head to the man in the dock and smile.

  ‘Well now,’ he said, jovially, and with a cock of the infamous eyebrow, ‘fifty years and you haven’t applied for a licence yet? It’s not like a Scots Guard to be forgetful . . .’ as though he were a school teacher scolding a favourite pupil for overdue homework, and not a judge addressing a driver who had just admitted flouting the Road Traffic laws for most of the twentieth century. ‘Whatever, you’re admonished.’

  He thereon, despite a complete lack of any mitigation to support it, went on to make a finding that there were ‘special reasons’ why neither a disqualification nor even the imposition of the minimum number of penalty points was merited in the circumstances.

  Acknowledgements

  With grateful thanks:

  To Moira Forsyth and Bob Davidson of Sandstone Press for their faith in me, their encouragement and ongoing professional advice.

  To Keara Donnachie, Sandstone’s publicity officer for doing her best to make me a household name – not easy, even in my own household.

  To Al Guthrie for providing so many words of wisdom over the years.

  To the eagle-eyed Nicholas Leonard, pro(o)freader extraordinaire.

  And once again to my wife, Gillian, without whose unalloyed critical evaluations, cups of tea and buttered toast, the writing of a Robbie Munro story just wouldn’t be the same.