Suddenly it was winter again. She stood, I stood.
‘Okay, okay,’ I said. ‘What now? Do you want me to promise to do better until you lot raid my office around about this time next year?’ That was the usual way of things and it worked for me.
She walked to the door and held it open for me. ‘No, not this time, Mr Munro. This time we have something else in mind.’
4
‘You’ve been what?’
I was still in a state of shock when I phoned Grace-Mary from Haymarket station, just around the corner from SLAB HQ.
‘Struck off the register,’ I confirmed. ‘Forbidden to provide criminal legal aid services.’
‘Does Joanna know? If the girl had any sense she’d go back to being a PF. What are you going to do?’
The answer to my secretary’s first question was, no. I’d yet to break the news to my colleague who was off on High Court business. Go bankrupt seemed the obvious answer to her second.
‘How long is the ban for?’
She with the red-polished fingernails hadn’t stated the length of my sentence, though I’d formed the distinct impression it was conditional on a cold-snap somewhere hot.
I wandered down to platform 4 in a daze and boarded the westbound train. Seventy percent of my revenue gone just like that. I’d been permitted to finish those cases I’d started. Thereafter I could take on no new legal aid work. Of course, I could still handle private cases; SLAB had no say in those, but private clients weren’t exactly thick on the ground, except perhaps for road traffic cases, and who wanted to spend their life in the Justice of the Peace court arguing over calibration certificates for speed guns? The problem criminal lawyers had was that their clients didn’t have money. A lack of money was the big reason most of their clientele turned to crime in the first place. Those criminals who did have money tended not to get caught very often, which was why they were rich criminals in the first place.
In case the day hadn’t started badly enough, I arrived back at Linlithgow to be reminded that the one reliable thing about life was that, no matter how bad things got, they could always get a lot worse.
‘Mr Munro?’
Two men in black suits walked into reception. The one who’d spoken was a young Englishman, tall and slim, smiling through a full beard that was not so much trimmed as sculpted. Behind him an older man, squat, solid and mean-looking, like a bulldog with anger management issues. For a moment I wondered if SLAB had decided to do away with the niceties and send round a couple of hitmen.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Christchurch. This is my colleague, D.C. Wood.’ Still smiling, the man with the beard produced a wallet, holding it up to reveal a warrant card on one half, a metal star-shaped badge on the other. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’ He cast a glance at Grace-Mary. ‘In private.’
‘Mrs Gribbin is my private secretary,’ I said. ‘You can be assured anything you say will be kept in strict confidence.’ Although Grace-Mary said nothing, I could sense her approval. I didn’t know what questions these cops had to ask me, more importantly I didn’t know what answers they may later say I’d given them. Better to have a witness. And it would save Grace-Mary the hassle of having to listen in on the other side of the door.
Christchurch gave my secretary a polite nod of recognition and then turned to me again. ‘You had a visit from a man called William Paris.’
The box. I knew I should have asked for more money.
‘Well?’ the man in the beard asked, after a moment or two of silence.
I tried to keep my face as straight as the poker I’d liked to have beaten Billy Paris over the head with. ‘Well, what? I haven’t heard a question yet.’
The Bulldog stepped forward. ‘William Paris. Where is he?’ He pushed his face at me. ‘Question enough for you, smart-arse?’
‘Grace-Mary,’ I said, ‘show these gentlemen out, will you?’
The younger man frowned at his colleague, bringing him to heel. ‘There’s no need for any unpleasantness. All we want is a little help with Mr Paris’s whereabouts.’
‘He’s my client,’ I said. ‘I don’t have his address, but even if I did I couldn’t disclose it to you without his express permission.’
Christchurch grimaced. ‘And that’s final is it?’ he asked.
‘How can it be anything else? If I don’t know his address, and—’
‘Yes, yes.’ The young man lowered his head, studied his shiny toecaps for a moment and then gave Grace-Mary a stiff little smile. ‘Do you have a list of client addresses? A database?’
I stepped in front of my secretary. ‘I can write it down if you’re having difficulty with my accent. I don’t have an address for Mr Paris and, if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you. That clear enough?’
The Bulldog rubbed a worryingly thick vein on the front of his forehead. Without a word, he came around the far edge of the reception desk, pushed Grace-Mary’s swivel chair to one side and pulled open a drawer. After reaching in and scattering the contents on the floor he moved onto the next.
‘Robbie, do something!’ Grace-Mary shouted at me, as a stash of People’s Friends and some knitting patterns fluttered to the floor.
Do something? Like what? Why do anything? It was now reasonable to assume that whatever Billy had left in that cardboard box was highly suspect. I’d had it since Friday. There was no urgency about this impromptu search. Without a warrant, anything these cops found would be inadmissible in court. Better to let them carry on with their illegal search than insist they obtain a warrant, do things properly and land me in whatever mess my client was involved in.
I took my mobile phone from my pocket and, after some fumbling around, managed to find the video camera. I pointed it at myself, then at Grace-Mary and then at the two suits in turn before commencing my commentary. ‘This is a video of the premises of R.A. Munro & Co. being searched by officers of Police Service Scotland without either a lawful warrant or my consent.’
As the Bulldog continued to throw drawers about, his senior officer took a firm grip of my hand so that the camera pointed straight in his face. ‘Correction,’ he said. ‘This search is being carried out by Ministry of Defence officers on a matter of extreme urgency and on the grounds of national security.’ He released my hand and then directed his colleague to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Before the Bulldog had pulled the top drawer out halfway, Grace-Mary appeared in front of me holding Billy’s cardboard box.
‘I think this is what you’re looking for,’ she said to Christchurch while fixing me with a hard stare.
The older cop slammed the filing cabinet drawer shut. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s the box that Mr Paris brought here on Friday afternoon,’ Grace-Mary clarified.
‘Mr Paris left a box with you?’ Christchurch asked. ‘What’s in it?’
Grace-Mary set the box down on the reception desk. ‘We don’t know. It’s not been opened.’
Christchurch studied the box, stroking his beard. ‘Is that correct? This box belongs to Paris and it’s never been opened?’
‘Unopened is the way it’s going to stay,’ I said. ‘Until either the rightful owner, whoever that may be, comes to collect it or you show me a valid warrant.’
The Inspector looked to his colleague and gestured at the box. The squat detective made a move to lift it from the desk, but I placed my hand firmly on the lid. ‘It’s going nowhere.’
Christchurch sighed the sigh of a man whose patience wasn’t so much thin as anorexic. ‘As I’ve already said—’
‘It’s a matter of national security. I know. I heard you.’ I pulled the box closer to myself. What had Billy Paris done that could possibly be a risk to national security? Had these cops even known about the box? There had been no mention of it before Grace-Mary had practically thrown the object at them. Surely they’d have come in force if they thought I was keeping guns or bomb-making material? And why wasn’t I being arrested?
‘How about t
his,’ I said. ‘You tell me what the threat to the nation is and I’ll let you open the box right here in front of me and my witness.’
‘You’ll let us!’ the Bulldog barked.
‘That’s right.’ I lifted the box from the table and cradled it in my arms.
‘We’ll see about that!’ He squared up to me.
Christchurch stretched an arm across his colleague’s wide chest and eased him away. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge what remains classified information.’ He pulled his own phone from a suit pocket and photographed me holding the cardboard box. That done, he took a black marker from a penholder Tina had made at nursery from a squeezy bottle, some coloured paper, a lot of glue and several hundred metres of sticky-tape. ‘We will be back. In the meantime, should Mr Paris return to claim his belongings, trust me we will know.’ He came over and signed his name across the seal on the lid in a big bold scribble.
What was in the box? According to Billy, no guns, knives, drugs or stolen goods. What did that leave that could amount to a threat to national security? Explosives? Toxins? And yet if that was the case the whole of Linlithgow High Street would have been cordoned off and cops swarming all over the place. You didn’t send a couple of Ministry of Defence plain-clothed along to collect bomb-making equipment or biological weapons.
The man in the beard threw the marker pen onto the desk and signalled to his colleague that they were leaving. ‘And when I do come back,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a warrant with me and I’ll expect to find that box and my signature intact.’ He took out his wallet and removed a business card. ‘Until then…’ he handed me the card. ‘If you suddenly remember anything you’d like to share, please do give me a call. Any time.’ He gave Grace-Mary and myself each a polite little nod and then left, taking his guard dog with him. He was courteous enough. I looked down at his business card. Courteous and wildly optimistic.
5
‘Have you got it yet?’ My dad was waiting for me as I dragged my weary self through the back door and into the kitchen.
‘Have I got what?’
‘If you have to ask, it means you haven’t,’ he said, after a brief bout of coughing.
I followed him through to the living room where he had a suitcase on the floor, half-packed with clothes for Tina’s Disneyland trip. She wasn’t leaving for another fortnight. He was obviously trying to make some kind of point. The girl herself was lying on her back on the sofa, playing with a doll.
‘Stop being so melodramatic and just tell me,’ I said. ‘What have I forgotten now? After all, I’ve got nothing better to do all day than remember stuff for you.’
‘It’s not for me.’ He seized me by the arm and pulled me close, all the better to growl in my ear, ‘It’s for the wean.’ He tilted his head at Tina. She was holding her doll above her head, a strip of kitchen roll tied around its neck, flying it about and emitting accompanying zooming noises, her four-year-old imagination on overdrive.
‘Oh.’
‘Aye. Oh.’ He backed me out of the room and into the kitchen. ‘Christmas is three weeks yesterday, and I’ve barely an orange put by for Tina’s stocking. You said it would be no bother. You knew a guy who could get anything, you said. Could get you a window table at the Last Supper, you said.’
I did know such a guy. The problem was he was extremely hard to get hold of other than when he was in trouble and at the moment he was on his best behaviour. Either that or not getting caught.
‘It’s not that easy, Dad. I’ve already told you, there aren’t any. Not in Scotland. Not anywhere. Pyxie Girl has been withdrawn. They’ve stopped making them. People queued up outside Hamley’s in London for days and were sent away. There’s been riots in the U.S.’
The aforementioned Pyxie Girl was one third of a crime-fighting superhero trio called The Enchanted Ones, comprising the aforesaid PG, Mr Magical and their black cat, Blizzard. All Spandex and spells, the TV show was on air almost as much as the adverts for its spin-off merchandise. Such was The Enchanted Ones’ popularity that their action figures were this year’s must-have Christmas toy. And that was the problem. Tina wanted a Pyxie Girl. While Mr Magical and his feline sidekick were widely available, as was their arch-enemy, Professor Voodoo (it was surprising how many super-villains had doctorates and postgraduate qualifications), Pyxie Girl could not be had for love nor money.
The difficulty was a political one. Exception had been taken to her name. Pyxie most certainly wasn’t a girl. She was all woman, and the actress who played the part had been denounced for accepting such a demeaning title. There had been a Twitter campaign and an e-petition. Pyxie Girl action figures were recalled by the manufacturer, at first with a view to repackaging them under the less patronising title of Lady Pyxie, only for that to cause copyright problems with a Japanese animation company who had a character with a similar name and for whom the blurring of the edges, when it came to age and the female form, was not seen as an issue. The result was an ongoing court battle causing chaos at Christmas for hundreds of politically incorrect wee girls and their parents.
‘Don’t give me any excuses. You promised her,’ my dad punctuated his words with a few short blows of his nose. ‘You promised she’d have that doll for her Christmas,’ he managed to get out before collapsing into a fit of sneezing that prevented me from pointing out that I hadn’t promised anything of the sort. He had.
My few months of fatherhood had taught me that children, like clients, should never be promised anything. Ever. Make a child a promise and you might as well open a vein and get it all down on velum, because they’d hold you to your word like Flashman holding Tom Brown to a roaring fireplace. I’d had a father-to-daughter chat with Tina about the whole problem in which, leaving the intellectual property aspect to one side, I’d done my best to explain the predicament in which Santa Claus found himself. It had gone fairly well until my dad had spoiled it all by mentioning how he knew Santa personally. Seemingly, they were great pals.
I led the old man to a chair and tried to push him down into it.
‘Firstly, I promised her nothing – you did, and, secondly, sit down and I’ll make you a toddy.’ I hoped mention of the amber nectar might assist in a change of subject. ‘A drop of whisky, hot water, lemon and honey, and your coughing and sneezing will be sorted out in no time.’
‘Get away.’ He shrugged me off. ‘I’ve got a cold. I’m not marinating a chop.’ He pulled out his hanky and blew his nose. ‘Just tell me what you’re going to do about getting Tina that doll that she wants.’ With a final sniff and wipe he stuffed the hanky back into his trouser pocket. ‘Sauntering about like tomorrow will do. I think you’ve forgotten how close to Christmas it is.’
‘Christmas? Really? You’d have thought there’d be decorations in the shops or adverts on the telly to warn me about that kind of thing.’ I took him by the shoulders and this time was successful in pressing him down into a chair. ‘Calm yourself or you’ll start coughing again. It’s going to be all right. Trust me. It said on the news that they’re hoping to have everything agreed between the TV company and the manufacturers any time now. There’ll be plenty of stock available come the New Year.’
‘The New Year!’ The old man launched himself to his feet again. ‘What good is the New Year? What do I say to the bairn on Christmas morning? It’s the only thing she’s asked for.’
‘Listen, dad. It’s Pyxie Girl that’s supposed to be magic, not me. If there’s none available, there’s none available. And anyway, how come it’s all down to me? It was you who promised you’d get it for her. You and Santa…’ I crossed my index and middle fingers and held them up. ‘You’re like that, apparently. Why should it be my problem? I’ve got her my presents already.’
‘Presents?’ He blew a blast into his hanky. ‘Clothes aren’t presents to a four-year-old. Weans want toys at Christmas.’
The conversation came to a shuddering halt when our very own four-year-old came through looking for more kitchen roll because h
er doll’s cape had ripped mid-flight.
‘Supper, bath and bed for you,’ I said, picking Tina up and holding her in my arms. ‘You’ve got a big day ahead of you helping Gramps get you all packed for going to Disneyland. That’ll be fun, won’t it?’
Tina looked me in the eyes. ‘Can you come too, Dad?’
‘Me? No, I’m too old for Disneyland.’
‘But Grandma’s going and so is Aunt Chloe and they’re old, so why can’t you come?’
I gave her a hug, put her down and hunkered beside her, holding her hands. ‘I’ve got to stay and work, darling. I have to go to court. I’m not allowed to take holidays just now, but I’ll be off for a few days at Christmas. When you get back you can tell me all about Disneyland and we can play with your new toys, and—’
‘Gramps says that he’s asked Santa to bring me Pyxie Girl.’ Tina turned and looked up at my dad all wide-eyed. ‘Didn’t you, Gramps?’ Back to me. ‘Gramps says that he knows Santa and that they’re friends and that Santa always does what Gramps asks him.’ Back to my Dad. ‘Doesn’t he, Gramps?’
‘That’s right, pet,’ my dad stared down at me like he was Father Christmas and I the little helper who’d sold Rudolph to a venison farm. ‘He does.’
My phone buzzed.
‘Oh, I meant to tell you, Vikki called,’ my dad said. ‘You’ve to book a table somewhere nice for Monday night and she’ll pick you up at the office around five o’clock.’
I tugged my phone from a trouser pocket where it had got itself wrapped around a hanky and my car keys.
‘Mr Munro?’ It took a moment or two for me to place the English accent as belonging to the man with the beard. ‘I need a word.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Then I’d be grateful if you’d unbusy yourself.’
‘Have you got a warrant yet?’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ve nothing to say, and I’d be very grateful if you and your pet bulldog would leave me in peace.’
Present Tense Page 3
