After ten years at the coal face of the criminal justice system I thought I’d seen everything. I felt I had now. I’d come to France to interview a witness in a murder case and ended up meeting the victim, alive and sunburnt.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m your wife’s lawyer.’
Zoë came and stood at my side. ‘Is this not the guy you’re looking for, Robbie?’
‘No Zoë. I’d like you meet the man our client is charged with murdering. I’d say she wasn’t guilty. Wouldn’t you?’
Callum Galbraith walked over to the fridge. ‘I’m having a beer. Anyone else want one?’ He was cool for someone who should have been stone cold.
Zoë declined. I said nothing.
Galbraith took a bottle from the fridge and opened it. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I’m not really sure because it wasn’t you I was looking for,’ I said.
‘I’m not going back. You know that.’
‘You’ll let Isla go to prison?’
‘I’ll let her decide what’s the right thing to do.’
‘That night,’ I said, ‘you came home early from the golf outing.’ Had he suspected his brother would be there? In my mind I pictured Callum arriving late after a long drive. The house in darkness. Tip-toeing up the stairs so as not to wake his wife. ‘You came home early and found them in bed together.’
He couldn’t look at me. He took his bottle of beer to the window and peered out through the shutters. The sun was dipping over the roof of the buildings opposite and the light in the single apartment room was fading.
‘The tomahawk,’ I said. ‘You kept it under your side of the bed. The side your brother was sleeping on, nearest the door. He was facing inwards. Facing her.’
Callum Galbraith drank deeply, glugging down the contents of the small green bottle. When he’d finished he turned and smashed it off the edge of the table.
‘Get out!’ The jagged neck was pointed at me. Zoë screamed. Were we witnessing the famous Callum Galbraith temper? I didn’t think so. I’d seen a lot of angry men in my time. The one standing before me was putting on an act. His spirit was as broken as the remains of the beer bottle he clutched tightly in his hand and I could tell just by looking that he wasn’t going to hurt me or, indeed, anyone ever again.
‘Get out!’ he yelled once more. Zoë tugged at my arm. I pulled away and sat down on a chair, I wasn’t ready to go. Not yet. I had managed to piece together in my mind what must have happened that night and could only marvel at the simplicity of it all.
Had Fergus Galbraith’s body been buried and found in a shallow grave several weeks later, or dragged by archaeologists from a peat bog in two thousand years’ time, all sorts of tests would have been carried out: DNA, dental records, the works, in order to establish the corpse’s identity. But there had been no need for any of that. Everyone knew whose body it was, or thought they did. Identification wasn’t an issue. Some of the cops at the scene knew Callum. They had turned up looking for a dead, six-foot tall, ginger-headed bloke and found one lying in his bed, head splattered over the pillow and a wife confessing to the dastardly deed.
The toxicology report had shown negative for ethanol because the blood tested wasn’t Callum’s. Fergus had stopped drinking and was taking medication. Medication he’d left in his brother’s house. Medication that Isla later took in a suicide attempt when she thought I was closing in on the truth.
‘Clubbing your brother – that was out of sheer anger. Understandable, I suppose, and all over before you even knew what you’d done. But disfiguring the face? That couldn’t have been much fun. Still, you had to do it, didn’t you? In case someone noticed that the scar, the one medically-recorded distinguishing feature, was missing.’
Callum Galbraith didn’t answer. In fact, he was no longer listening. He ran to the opposite corner of the room and raked about in a bed-side cabinet. When he found some cash he pocketed it along with a passport, his brother’s I guessed, and ran from the room. I heard him crash out of the front door.
I picked up the newspaper from the table. A day old edition of the Scotsman, priced, I noticed, at a hefty five Euros.
‘Are you just going to stand there reading the paper?’ Zoë said.
I carefully folded the newspaper and packed it into the plastic folder.
‘He’s getting away,’ Zoë said.
‘Leave him.’ With some difficulty I fastened shut the plastic folder.
‘I don’t understand. He’s getting away,’ Zoë repeated.
‘I know, and we’re going home.’
‘You’re just going to let him run off?’
I wasn’t sure what she expected me to do: chase after the ginger-headed fugitive, rugby-tackle him, bundle him into my rented car and drive back to Blighty? No need. I had what I came for and a lot more. The Crown might hold a death certificate that declared Callum Galbraith to be a dead man. But I knew if he was, he was a dead man running.
CHAPTER 49
We arrived back home in Linlithgow early Sunday morning. The French trip had been a great success for Isla’s case, but not everything I’d dreamt it might be from the point of view of getting to know Zoë better. Two hours in an airport departure lounge. A one and a half hour flight. An eight hour drive either side of a ten minute meeting with a living corpse. Amazing how I always managed to drain the romance from any situation no matter how promising it might have at first appeared. Why I’d thought the trip would be a good idea I didn’t know. There had to be simpler ways of spending time with Zoë than dragging her across sunny France in an non-air-conditioned car. Why didn’t I come straight out and ask her on a date? Why pretend it was work? I liked her, she seemed to like me. She could only say no. Was that the real problem – rejection?
I pulled into the car park of the former distillery.
‘Thanks, Robbie,’ Zoë said, sleepily. She grabbed her unused overnight bag from the back seat. ‘See you Monday.’
No coffee invitation then? Pity; at that moment caffeine was precisely what I needed. What I’d have preferred was a drop of what used to be made on the spot where my car was now parked, before someone decided that yuppie flats were more desirable than the aqua vitae. I was looking forward to a glass of whisky and a good kip almost as much as I was looking forward to my next consultation with Isla Galbraith.
Back at my own place, a call to the hospital told me that my murder client had been discharged home into the care of her parents. It was Sunday and I thought it best not to bother them; time enough tomorrow. Meanwhile, I had other pressing matters such as earning my sports client a few quid to help pay-off his homicidal quasi-father-in-law.
No whisky or forty-winks later, I found Malky at my dad’s. The two of them were sitting side by side in deckchairs on the back green. Both deep in thought. Both with pens in hand.
‘Blue,’ Malky said, thinking out loud. He wrote the word down on the piece of paper balanced on two hairy knees protruding from a borrowed pair of my dad’s voluminous shorts. His legs were quite tanned now though the scar on his left knee was still vivid white. ‘Edinburgh.’ He jotted that down too then paused for thought, sucking his pen, before turning to my dad. ‘Is Aries the goat or the bull?’
‘The ram,’ grunted my old man not lifting his head from his newspaper crossword.
Malky wrote something down and thought some more, pen poised over paper. ‘Steak and chips,’ he said, finishing with a flourish and clicking the pen with an air of finality before dropping it into the breast pocket of his short-sleeved shirt. ‘That’s me done.’
‘That’s you done what?’ I took the piece of paper from him and had a look at what he’d been writing.
‘Favourite colour? Birthplace? Star sign? Favourite meal?’
‘What’s this all about?’
‘The marketing guy asked me to fill it in. It’s part of the advertising feature. They’re doing an interview thing with me for the newspaper and I’ve to fill this in and tak
e it with me to the photo-shoot.’
I cast my eye further down the questionnaire. ‘Person you’d most like to meet? Answer: the wee shite who ripped the wing mirror off my car outside Celtic Park after the four-nil game.’
‘It was an Alfa Spider,’ Malky said. ‘I’d only had it a week.’
‘Italian motors.’ muttered my dad, still engrossed in his crossword puzzle. ‘Probably fell off itself.’
I read on. ‘Question: if you could go back in time where would you go? Answer: to the day I made the perfect black and tan so I could measure the exact heavy to Guinness ratio.’
‘Tending to be critical,’ said my dad. ‘Eight letters, starting with C, then something P, something I, something, something S.’
‘Cynical?’ was Malky’s hopeless guess.
‘Captious,’ I said.
‘Wheesht.’ My dad started to fill in the empty boxes. ‘Get your own crossword.’
‘Then stop reading out the clues,’ I said.
‘I’d have got that myself,’ he muttered.
‘Captious?’ Malky said. ‘Is that even a word?’
‘Course,’ I said. ‘Or, then again… I could be bluffing.’
My dad stopped writing. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, pen hovering over the newspaper. His moustache twitched suspiciously. ‘Another beer, Malky?’
‘No chance,’ I said. ‘He’s got to be changed and out of here in ten minutes.’
My dad heaved himself out of his deckchair. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘So this is how the other half live,’ I said, once my dad had gone inside for a beer and a quick swatch at the dictionary.
Malky smiled up at me. He looked happy and relaxed. ‘Dexy Doyle phoned this morning.’
‘Phoned you? What? Here?’
‘It’s okay. I smoothed things over with Dad.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well he wasn’t over the moon about terrorists phoning but—’
‘Not dad – Dexy. What’d he say?’
‘He was surprisingly fine. I told him the property in London was as good as his and then he asked about the money.’
‘And?’
Malky looked pleased with himself.
‘I talked him into taking half now and half in three months. He seemed okay about it all. It was an almost civilised conversation.’
Sometimes I wondered if my brother had headed too many footballs in his younger days. ‘You’re overlooking one important factor. You don’t have half the money.’
Malky climbed out of his deckchair. ‘Not yet. But I know you’re working on that.’
CHAPTER 50
Prestonfield Park was resplendent in the early August sunshine: the pitch closely mown and freshly lined showed no ill effects from Saturday’s friendly and looked all set for the new season ahead. Jake Turpie and his minder, Deek Pudney, were waiting for us in the centre circle beside a large object draped with a white sheet. For once Jake had discarded his set of oily overalls and was smartly attired in a suit and clean white shirt, a brightly-coloured tie about his neck. I hadn’t known he possessed a suit and a clean shirt - or a neck for that matter. He was so well-groomed even his head was polished to an extra-specially high sheen.
In a few minutes we were joined by a man with a lot of hair some of which was dyed blonde, flattened forward at the front and sticking up at the back. He was young but not as young as he dressed. I took him to be the marketing guy Malky had mentioned, for he had with him a couple of personable young ladies in rather tight-fitting maroon and white Linlithgow Rose FC strips. Close behind came a photographer lugging a metal case. The rest of the ground was empty apart from some youths sitting on the terracing steps behind one set of goals, enjoying the sunshine, and slugging tonic wine. Occasionally they would shout inappropriate remarks at the two female footballers and cheer if they elicited a response, no matter how dismissive.
‘This is where it all started, Malky,’ said marketing guy, hands outstretched, and spinning three hundred and sixty degrees. ‘This was the beginning of your venture into the world of professional soccer. And today…’ he went behind Jake and looked over his shoulder as the girls whisked off the white sheet to unveil a gleaming, nearly-new hatchback, its nearside plastered in stickers advertising Jake’s new business. ‘Today we embark on another exciting venture - JT Motors Limited.’ The scowl that was more or less a permanent feature of Jake’s face relaxed into what could only be described as almost a smile.
‘Right, Malky,’ said the photographer, assuming control of events. He probably had a wedding to go to later. ‘We’ll take a few here and then go over to the goals with the girls.’ He pointed to the end of the pitch where a shiny new JT Motors advertising board reflected the sun’s rays.
I totted it up in my head: photographer, newspaper advertising feature, track-side hoarding; the whole package must have been costing Jake a small fortune. And then there was my fee, or rather Malky’s, to consider. We’d settled on five thousand for my client’s services including my own five hundred pounds arrangement fee which I’d insisted on up front and in cash, strictly no fifties. Jake had stumped up the advance with hardly a struggle; he was really sparing no expense on his new enterprise, which, though he could well afford it, was very unlike him. The Jake Turpie I knew parted with cash like he parted his hair.
After a few snaps of Malky and Jake standing next to the car, over which the two girls were sprawled full length, the photographer took my brother and the lovelies down to one of the goal mouths where he arranged them into various poses. Malky, arms crossed, foot on the ball, babes either side, seemed a particular favourite.
Jake sidled over to me. ‘What do you think? JT Motors - that was big Deek’s idea. JT, you know, it’s quite like GT and it’s also my initials, good eh?’
I thought Deek blushed a little. It was probably the first time his employer had praised him for anything that didn’t involve a compound fracture to a late-payer.
Suddenly the photographer was walking up the pitch towards us leaving Malky leaning against a goal post, a girl on each arm.
‘Jimmy,’ he said to the marketing guy, ‘could you do something about the neds? They’re buggering-up the background.’ The man with the hair cast a worried glance at the youths on the terracing who were now engaged in a spot of rough and tumble, wrestling and taking fly-kicks at each other. A green bottle fell from the back pocket of one of them onto the concrete steps but didn’t smash. Plastic; those monks at Buckfast Abbey thought of everything.
‘Stay where you are, son,’ Jake told the marketing guy, his eyes fixed on the disturbance. The expression on his face had reformed to its default scowl setting and was darkening by the second. ‘Deek,’ he growled, and without need of further instruction the big man set off down the pitch to restore background tranquillity.
Later, when we’d retired to the Rose Club for a bite to eat and a drink, all courtesy of Jake, I waited until Malky was deep in conversation with the girls from the photo-shoot before approaching the subject of money.
‘So,’ I said, rubbing my hands together, ‘business done, that leaves only the small matter of Malky’s fee.’
‘Bill me,’ Jake said.
I took a step back. ‘What do you mean – bill you?’
‘Send me an invoice. I’ll send you a cheque.’
I had to be hearing things. Since when did Jake Turpie start dealing in cheques?
He read my thoughts. ‘You heard the man didn’t you? I’m on a new business venture. This isn’t me selling scrap. The folk who buy my cars pay by cheque, bank draft, they take out finance. Cars are just not a cash business any longer. And I’ve got to show outlays to set against profits, you know, for tax purposes.’
Tax? Was this some kind of joke?
‘Right then,’ I said, ‘if it’s not readies, the fee’s six and a half.’
‘Five was the deal,’ Jake reminded me. ‘And you’ve had half a loaf up front,’ he added. ‘That l
eaves me owing you four and a half.’
The shadow of the tax man loomed large. ‘Make it pictures of the Queen and I’ll take four.’
‘Three and a half,’ Jake gloated. He might have been thrown out of school without a qualification to his name but he knew what five grand less a chunk to the Chancellor was.
‘Let’s have it,’ I said, holding my hand out to receive a wedge.
‘Not here,’ Jake said. ‘I don’t have the cash on me. You’ll need to come to my place for it.’
‘When?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘How’s the morn’s night sound?’
It sounded extremely unappealing. People who went to Jake’s place to talk money didn’t always come back, or if they did it was often with pieces missing.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, sensing my hesitation. ‘I wouldn’t bump you.’ He went over to Malky, who was now flirting with a waitress. Jake unceremoniously elbowed her out of the way, reached up and put an arm around my brother’s shoulders. ‘Well I might bump you baw-heid… but not the big lad. Not my hero.’
CHAPTER 51
Monday morning. Isla Galbraith’s preliminary hearing was just over twenty-four hours away. I would loved to have been there to personally drop the bombshell on Cameron Crowe; tell him he could shove his murder charge and any offer of culpable homicide. I’d seen the murder victim with my own eyes and he was alive and well and paddling a canoe though the salt marshes of mid-western France. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t believe me and, anyway, I was going to have to arrange for the preliminary hearing to be continued in the hope that the following week when it called again, I’d still be practising law and in a position to further my investigations.
When I arrived at the office my PC was already up and running and a virtual yellow-sticky was on the screen. Isla Galbraith had phoned. Bearing in mind that before I left the country my client had been so distressed at my attempts to track down her brother-in-law that she’d tried to top herself, and given the fact that the very same brother-in-law had, as she must have known, died bloodily in her marital bed, I didn’t think our next conversation was best suited to a telephone call. My plan was to get to court early, speak to the Sheriff Clerk nicely so as to have my cases called first and then nip through to see Isla at her home for a face to face.
Relatively Guilty (Best Defence series Book 1) Page 22
