The home of Turpie (International) Salvage Ltd was a vast lunar landscape covered in heaps of rusting motor cars and heavy plant machinery. Jake’s operation was spread across a hundred square acres of prime West Lothian scrub-land and the office, or administration centre, as his headed notepaper referred to it as, was a dilapidated prefabricated cabin served by a set of rickety wooden steps and guarded by an irritable mutt of indeterminate pedigree.
Jake was busy doing something behind a curtain that partitioned the cabin. He shouted through to me to wait, so I sat down on the orange-upholstered window seat at the far end of the cabin and picked up a recent edition of the Linlithghowshire Journal & Gazette: a big name for a small local newspaper. There was an old picture of Malky on the front page. He was squatting next to a football and wearing a pair of the tight shorts so admired by Zoë’s sister. The article was headed: Footballer Survives Death Crash and went on in some detail about Malky’s career with only a brief reference to the accident that had led to the death of a friend. The nearest it came to apportioning blame was to mention that, no other vehicle was involved.
After I’d read the article I got up to find out what was keeping Jake.
‘I’ll be right with you,’ he said, noticing my head poking around the curtain, but not taking his gaze from the man seated across from him at a shoogly Formica table in what served as the kitchen. Two mugs, a milk carton, a burst bag of sugar and some plastic teaspoons had been pushed aside to make room for the man’s left arm. The sleeve of his shirt was rolled up to mid-forearm, revealing a number of homemade India-ink tattoos, his wrist pinned to the table by Jake’s not so charming assistant, Big Deek Pudney. Before I could say or do anything to intervene, Jake brought a two pound ball-hammer down with impressive accuracy on the man’s ring finger. He’d obviously practised on the man’s pinky because it too was a bloody pulp. The man screamed but little sound escaped the yellow tennis ball stuffed in his mouth.
Once the man had stopped shaking, Jake grabbed him by the hair and wrenched his head back. ‘Any questions or have I made myself clear?
The man’s frantic nods indicated that matters were crystalline. Jake held the hammer up to the man’s frightened face. ‘I can explain in more detail if you like. You have got eight more fingers after all.’ The man’s eyes were wide and showing mostly white. His head thrashed wildly from side to side. A spray of sweat and snotters landed on the table, dissolving granules of spilled sugar.
‘Good,’ Jake said. ‘Then we’ve made some produce today.’
I supposed he meant progress; whatever, the man with mush for fingers seemed to understand well enough.
Deek yanked the man to his feet.
‘You can go now,’ Jake said to him, wiping the blood off his hammer with a grubby J-Cloth and putting it back in the drawer of a filing cabinet that so far as I could see held no files, only a selection of tools.
The man was frozen to the spot, too scared to move. ‘On you go,’ Jake said, reassuringly. The man tottered to the door, keeping a wary eye on Jake, not wanting to turn his back on the evil wee sod in the oil-stained overalls. He reached the door. The dog at the bottom of the stairs growled a warning. The man hesitated.
Jake walked over to him. The man cowered, his injured hand hanging limply at his side, the other raised to protect his face. Jake swatted the hand away, seized the tennis ball and wrenched it out of the man’s mouth, trailing strings of saliva. ‘Where d'ye you think you're going with the dug’s baw?’ He pushed the man in the back sending him head first down the wooden steps and then turned to me. ‘What brings you here?’
I folded the newspaper. ‘I’m here about you and Andy.’
Still holding the door open Jake watched as his victim staggered off. ‘Who?’
‘Andy Imray. He works for me. Got you off that speeder the other week there.’
‘Aye, that’s right. Good lad. Knows his stuff.’
‘You bunged him fifty quid.’
‘I’m a generous man.’
Jake put his fingers to his lips and blasted a whistle. In response the mutt came up the stairs and into the cabin. It sniffed about warily. Jake tapped the wobbly table with his hand.
‘It was a snider. And not a very good one,’ I said.
‘Tell me about it.’ Jake went to an overhead cupboard, lifted the door and took down a shoe-box. He removed the lid to show me bundles of fifties. He tossed one to me. I riffled through the notes. Each had the same serial number. The paper also felt slightly strange, not bad, just not quite right. I’d been too busy trying to impress Zoë to notice.
‘What am I supposed to do with this crap?’ Jake asked me. He returned the bundle to the shoe-box and put it back in the cupboard. ‘I’ve just been explaining to my supplier that quality is going to have to improve.’
‘The problem is, Jake,’ I cleared my throat. ‘I spent the fifty and now I’ve been charged.’
He laughed, finding a funny side that, hitherto, I hadn’t known existed. He shrugged. ‘That’s too bad but I’m not sure what I can do about it. You’re the lawyer. I’m just a scrappy.’ You wouldn’t be thinking of doing anything stupid, Robbie? You know how me and the police haven’t always seen eye to eye in the past.’
He glanced over at the filing cabinet where he’d put the hammer.
I thought I’d let the topic drop for the moment.
The dog put its forelegs on the shoogly table and started to clean the surface with its tongue, licking off a mixture of body fluids and sugar.
Jake picked up the newspaper. ‘See your brother’s in the news again. What a boy.’ Jake had come over all starry-eyed. ‘And what a player. D’ye mind his goal in the cup final?’ He stuck his shiny bald head forward, miming a header. ‘Pure genius.’ I’d never before heard Jake say anything nice about anyone.
The dog stopped licking the table and began sniffing at the bag of sugar. Jake tossed the damp tennis ball in his hand. ‘Used to use a light bulb,’ he reminisced. ‘Must be getting soft.’ He threw it out of the door and the mutt ran off after it. ‘Now - unless there was something else - I’ve work to do.’
CHAPTER 31
The consulting rooms at Polmont Y.O.I. were all taken, so, rather than wait for one to become free, I’d volunteered to see the prisoner in the main recreation area as it would be empty for another hour until the start of open visits.
‘They said this was an agent’s visit but you’re not my lawyer.’
‘Quite correct, Jamie,’ I said, as the young offender dropped into the seat opposite me. They’d removed the old round wooden tables which had been wide and set at an uncomfortably low height to help make any unauthorised transfer of material between visitor and prisoner more noticeable to the screws. We sat down at one of the new, much smaller rectangular tables that were covered in a shiny grey laminate. ‘I’m someone else’s lawyer and I’ve come here to ask you a few questions that might help their case.’
He sat back and sniffed.
‘Callum Galbraith.’
‘That your client?’
‘No, that’s who I want to speak to you about: police constable Callum Galbraith. He broke your arm a few years back.’
‘Him? I’ve news for you - he’s dead. His missus plunged him. It was in the paper.’
‘I’m acting for his missus.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘I’m looking for information on him.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like how he came to break your arm.’
He glanced around, bored, looking to see who else was in, but the place was deserted apart from a passman emptying bins and sweeping up in between the ranks of tables, and a couple of screws standing chatting over at the door to the closed visit rooms.
‘Your arm,’ I said, bringing his attention back to me.
He sniffed and ran a hand across his throat. ‘Hot in here init? I’m dead thirsty.’
I took the hint. ‘Where did it happen?’ I asked upon m
y return from the vending machine.
He opened the plastic bottle, drank most of the contents in one go and burped. ‘The SPAR at my place.’
‘Spray-painting it, were you?’
He shrugged and sniffed simultaneously.
‘Anything profound?’
‘Eh?’
‘What were you writing?’
‘Just tagging it.’
‘The shopkeeper - Asian?’
‘We called him Bin Laden.’ He finished the bottle with another long swig, tried to burp again but managed only a squeak.
‘So, what happened? What did Galbraith do to you?’
He screwed the top back on the bottle, laid it on the table and gave it a spin. ‘One minute my mates are all there, next thing they’ve bolted. I look up and it’s the polis. One of them grabs me by the arm, I pull away. He caws the legs from under me, I fall over and pop.’
The bottle slowed and came to a stop. He went to give it another spin but I pulled it away and stood it upright out of his reach.
‘Pop?’
‘Aye. My shoulder. Kept coming out after that. Just needed to roll over in bed the wrong way. Had to get an operation and everything.’ He pulled an arm out of a sleeve and lifted his orange polo-shirt up to reveal the clean arc of a surgical scar above his left shoulder.
‘How old were you?’
‘Thirteen. But I’m seventeen now and out of here the day before my eighteenth. Ya beauty!’ He punched the air. One of the screws glanced over and shouted at him to behave.
‘That it? Did he do anything else? Hit you a couple of digs, maybe?’ I asked, perhaps over optimistically.
‘Naw, he was brand new. Got Bin Laden to give me a fag and everything to keep me calm ‘til the ambulance came.’
‘How much money did you get for it?’
‘Supposed to be two and a half but it was one of they no win no fee lot and by the time they’d taken their cut it was fifteen hundred I got, well ma maw got.’
Two thousand five hundred. The classic nuisance value settlement. Made with no admission of liability and probably just before Christmas. His mum would have jumped at it.
‘What are you in for?’ I asked.
‘Fire-raising.’
‘How long did you get?’
‘Two year.’
With remission he’d do one. No doubt he’d have been out sooner if his mum had let him go home on a tag. She was probably enjoying the break.
‘Only two month to go,’ he called over to the screws. ‘I’ve spent longer in the shower.’
‘Wouldn’t be saying that if this was still the Borstal,’ one of the screws called back at him. ‘No Playstation or Sky TV back then, son. A short sharp shock. That would have sorted you.’
The Thatcherite in the navy blue uniform returned to the conversation with his colleague.
I stood.
The prisoner sniffed a long snottery one and swallowed. ‘You going to need me for a witness or something? I wouldn’t mind a day out of this place.’
I couldn’t dislodge the notion that a jury would take one look at the ned in the orange polo shirt and wish Callum Galbraith had dislocated more than just his shoulder.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘’fore you go, gonnae get us a Mars Bar?’
Prices weren’t any cheaper in the nick. The chocolate fell with a thud into the tray of the vending machine. I threw it over to the prisoner and he caught it in both hands.
‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘Mr Galbraith brung a whole pack of these when he came to see me in hospital. Brand new so he was.’
CHAPTER 32
The Faculty of Advocates had excellent consulting rooms on the Royal Mile at One Hundred and Forty-Two the High Street. They were part of a modern, purpose-built facility, centrally located and in regular use. So why was it, I wondered, that instead of meeting there, Ranald Kincaid Q.C. was leading Isla Galbraith and me down a narrow, winding and seemingly endless staircase into the uttermost bowels of Parliament House? Could it be so that fewer people would see him dirtying his civil hands with a criminal client and her nasty Legal Aid lawyer? I couldn’t help but notice that the Q.C. was without his brief and hoped we weren’t in for one of those consultations where counsel shook hands with the client, charged a whopping fee and then suggested another consultation, as well as another fee, in a week’s time. Kincaid could screw the Legal Aid Board if he liked but I couldn’t afford to traipse in and out to Edinburgh on Legal Aid rates. Kincaid would be easily tucking away ten times what I was getting paid.
‘All went well, Saturday night,’ I said by way of small talk once we had reached the lowest level.
‘I suppose you could say it was a success,’ said the Q.C. He flicked at his nose with a crisply-laundered handkerchief before folding it carefully and returning it to his jacket pocket. ‘Personally, I’d describe the whole thing as lurid and not befitting senior members of the Faculty or the Judiciary. I told Lord Dornion so on the night. The man was laughing so much I thought he was going to injure himself.’
Lord Dornion laughing? No matter how I tried, I just couldn’t imagine the Lord Justice Clerk laughing at anything, except, perhaps, dishing out back to back life sentences to a bunch of peace-protesters. Truly, Malky must have gone down a storm.
We walked for a distance along a narrow corridor before squeezing into a tiny windowless room, the only contents of which, apart from a tatty-old rug, were three hard chairs and a 1960’s oval-shaped coffee table that had some pieces of blank A4 paper lying on it weighted down by a huge glass ash-tray. I took a seat beside my client and laid my set of papers on the table. Kincaid remained standing holding the door open.
‘I wonder, Mr Munro,’ he said, ‘if I might have a word.’
I stepped into the corridor with him.
‘I’m extremely concerned about this case,’ he said, closing the door after us. ‘The Crown, I’m led to believe, is not to be swayed and intent on taking this matter to trial. Which leads me—’
‘Don’t worry. It’s all brinkmanship.’
‘Which leads me to believe,’ continued Kincaid, ignoring my interruption, ‘that I may not be best suited to your plans.’
He was trying to bail out on me. I couldn’t let that happen. My visit to Crown Office had been only a minor sortie with the enemy; a softening up exercise. Soon it would be time to send in the shock troops. Kincaid dreaded Isla Galbraith’s case going to trial, Cameron Crowe, as lead for the prosecution, had it in his power to do him a favour and see that it didn’t; something that would do Crowe’s career opportunities no harm at all. It was a match made in heaven with Robbie Munro playing the part of cupid. Once I’d primed Kincaid and fired him in Crowe’s direction, I was confident any hurdles on the way to a plea of culpable homicide would quickly tumble.
‘This case isn’t going anywhere near a trial,’ I told him. ‘The A.D. hasn’t ruled out culpable homicide and if I can set up a meeting between the two of you…’ Kincaid looked as though he were going to protest. ‘Armed with the necessary mitigatory information,’ I assured him, ‘the Crown will come around to our way of thinking.’
I could tell he wasn’t happy, but, crisis averted for the moment, we returned to the small room and sat down. I edged my chair round so I was sitting beside him and laid out my updated set of papers on the table between us.
‘We can share my set,’ I said.
‘No need,’ Kincaid said. ‘My junior should be here any minute.’
‘Leonard Brophy’s coming?’ I hadn’t told Leonard about this consultation because I didn’t want him breezing in and chuntering on about almond slices or something.
‘Yes, the new boy,’ Kincaid said, ‘the tubby one,’ he added by way of clarification.
At that moment the door opened and junior counsel shoe-horned his way into the room. The small V’s of toffee icing at each corner of his mouth screamed fudge doughnut. He looked in vain for a seat, put his senior’s sewn-up bundle of papers on th
e table and left, returning a short time later with a high-backed dining room chair that he’d found goodness knows where and which was probably a rare antique. After a struggle and much chipped paint from the door frame, he managed to manoeuvre it into place between the Q.C. and me.
‘Sorry, I’m late,’ he said. ‘Thought we’d be meeting down the road at one-four-two.’
Kincaid had spotted the toffee icing. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and mimed wiping his own mouth while staring meaningfully at his junior. Leonard took the hint and drew a sleeve across his lips, then he pushed his set of papers across to senior counsel, pulled my papers over to himself and began to thumb through them.
Kincaid crossed his legs, clasped his hands and looked over the top of his glasses at the client. ‘Mrs Galbraith, the charge against you is a most serious one.’
Talk about stating the obvious? Leonard glanced up at me and rolled his eyes, then quickly, like a naughty schoolboy, returned his gaze to the new brief which Grace-Mary had put together for me using the latest batch of papers to come in from the Crown.
‘Mr Munro has put together a fine brief. I can assure you that no stone has been left unturned.’ The Q.C. gave me a tight little smile; it was convention for counsel to big-up the instructing solicitor in front of the client but usually only when there was some bad news in the offing. Senior counsel sighed heavily. ‘I know Mr Munro is of the opinion that the Crown will eventually accede to his request for a reduction of the charge, but, sadly, I do not share his optimism and time is fast running out, what with your preliminary hearing in only two weeks’ time. Your husband was a police officer. According to the pathologists it looks very much as though he was asleep when you struck him on the head with a…’ he looked down at his papers, ‘with a tomahawk and then repeatedly stabbed him through the temple with a screwdriver. Unless you are clinically insane, in which case you can expect to be sent to the State Hospital, I would strongly recommend you plead guilty at the earliest opportunity.’
Isla Galbraith blanched. Her bottom lip trembled. She turned and stared at me. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘You said I wasn’t to plead guilty to murder, Robbie. You said it would be that culpable thing.’
Relatively Guilty (Best Defence series Book 1) Page 13
