Present Tense Read online

  WHS McIntyre is a partner in Scotland’s oldest law firm Russel + Aitken, specialising in criminal defence. William has been instructed in many interesting and high-profile cases over the years and now turns fact into fiction with his string of legal thrillers, The Best Defence Series, featuring defence lawyer, Robbie Munro. He is married with four sons.

  Forthcoming from the same author in 2017

  Good News, Bad News

  Last Will

  Published in Great Britain by

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Dochcarty Road

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9UG

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright (c) WHS McIntyre 2016

  The moral right of WHS McIntyre to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  The publisher acknowledges support from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-910985-25-0

  ISBNe: 978-1-910985-26-7

  Cover design by Jason Anscombe at Raw Shock

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

  With love to my mum for all her advice over the years; especially that I should forget about being an author and be a lawyer instead.

  If I hadn’t listened, I’d have nothing to write about. And no money.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

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  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

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  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  Authors Note

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to my unbelievably patient wife, Gillian. If not for her roles as both proof-reader and censor, this book would be a great deal longer and probably the subject of several bitter on-going libel actions. Thanks too to my colleague Gail Paton and my sons for their evaluations of the first draft.

  I’d also like to acknowledge my fellow members of the Criminal Bar at Falkirk & District Faculty of Solicitors for talking so much rubbish and providing me with so many lines of dialogue, especially for the less sophisticated of my characters. Thanks to Gordon Addison, a lawyer with an in-depth, if slightly worrying, knowledge of helicopter sabotage. Regards also to the Scottish Legal Aid Board without whom I’d suffer from acute low blood-pressure. Finally, thanks to Mrs Bain, my former English teacher, who thought I shouldn’t be a lawyer, but be an author instead. Better late than never.

  Introduction

  It’s not easy being a father. Being Robbie Munro’s father is practically impossible. Sometimes I look at the boy, how old is he now, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, something like that, and wonder, where did it all go wrong?

  I suppose his mother, God bless her, dying when he was just a baby was a setback. That and him wanting to stick in at the school.

  His big brother, Malcolm, had the right idea. Captain of Glasgow Rangers and Scotland by the time he was twenty-two. Scored the winning goal in the Cup Final. The Hall of Fame had a space on the wall reserved for Malky’s photo until some dirty Kraut ended his career with a tackle that was more of an assassination attempt. He’s got his own radio phone-in now and there’s not a pub in the land that Malky can’t go into without someone offering him a drink. Or a square-go. I told Robbie to follow in his brother’s bootsteps and make some real money. Sure, his lack of talent would have been a hindrance, but there’s more to football than skill and ability, and even I have to hand it to the laddie, he is a trier. Every team needs someone like that. Someone prepared to put a foot in and leave it there, let folk know they’re in a game, create some bruises. And on that subject, what was wrong with joining the Police, like his old man? One of Lothian & Borders’ finest I was, for more than thirty years. Steady work, steady pay and look at me now. Nice pension, nice cottage in the country. What’s Robbie got? No money, no house and a legal aid bucket shop on Linlithgow High Street.

  That’s what happens if you insist on getting yourself an education. Not that I stood in his way. Edinburgh Uni. Fair enough. But a law degree? ‘We need more lawyers,’ said nobody ever, and if that wasn’t bad enough, when he comes out he specialises in criminal defence. All I hear is presumption of innocence, this, better ten guilty men go free, that. If his clients aren’t guilty why are they on trial? It was out of spite, of course. I spent my working life putting them away, and now he’s in court, up to all sorts to keep the bampots out, just so they can commit more crime and he can get more legal aid money. I’m just glad we’ve a government that’s putting a stop to all that sort of thing. Innocent until proved guilty? Seriously, the way Robbie talks, he’s never met a guilty man.

  And don’t think my youngest has only failed in his choice of vocation. No, he can be a flop at anything he turns his hand to. Take his love life for instance. The man’s not a disaster at relationships, he’s a horseman short of an apocalypse. Remember Jill Green, daughter of my best mate Wee Vince? Now don’t get me wrong, I always knew she was too good for him, but having inveigled his way into her affections, and after catching her in what can only have been a moment of weakness, or, more likely, madness, and getting her to agree to marry him – what does he go and do? Only lets the lassie jilt him for some good-for-nothing multi-millionaire.

  Mind you, you have to feel for the lad. Before Jill, there was Zoë Reynolds. He really thought that romance was going somewhere. Turned out the only person going anywhere was Zoë. Australia. I mean, the lengths to which some women will go.

  Despite all his many failings, Robbie keeps on bouncing back, bobbing about in the toilet bowl of life like one of the great unflushable. Lucky? Sometimes I think he doesn’t do the Lottery because it wouldn’t be fair on all the other folk. Even his complete failure to family-plan with Zoë, turned out to be the biggest success of his life: Tina, my darling, beautiful and intelligent granddaughter. Living proof that genes skip a generation. The wee pet lost her mum early, just like her dad did. Thankfully that’s where any similarity ends.

  But that’s enough. Let’s not cast up all Robbie’s failures, there isn’t the space here, and, anyway, it’s December, Christmas looms, and there’ll be plenty more to come in the New Year.

  So, at this time, when some people reflect on the past and others look forward, I say forget history and let the future do its worst. Never mind auld lang syne, better to live in the moment, concentrate on the here and now - if only to find out what that son of mine is up to in the Present Tens
e.

  Police Sergeant Alex Munro (retired)

  1

  Clients. They tend to fall into one of three categories: sad, mad or bad. Some people said Billy Paris’s time in the military had left him clinically depressed, others that he had a personality disorder bordering on the psychotic. Personally, I’d always thought him the kind of client who’d stick a blade in you for the price of a pint. Friday afternoon he was in my office, chewing gum and carrying a cardboard box all at the same time. The box said Famous Grouse on the outside. I didn’t hear the clink of whisky bottles as he thudded it onto my desk.

  ‘Look after this for me, will you, Robbie?’ he said. No ‘how’s it going?’ No small talk. Nothing. Just a request that sounded more like a demand.

  A number of questions sprang immediately to mind. First up, ‘What’s in the box?’

  With an index finger the size of a premium pork sausage, Billy tapped the side of a nose that was deviated considerably to the left.

  ‘You either tell me what’s in it or you and the box can leave now,’ I said.

  Chomping on an enormous wad of gum, Billy walked to the window and stared out at a dreich December afternoon.

  ‘Billy…?’

  The big man clumped his way back over to my desk, wedged himself into the seat opposite and sighed. ‘Just for a few days, maybe a week, two tops. Definitely no longer than a month.’

  The box was well secured with brown tape. I shoved it across the desk at him. He shoved it back.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ He tried to blow a bubble with his gum, failed and started chewing again.

  ‘For a start I don’t know what’s in it.’

  ‘It’s just stuff.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘You know. Stuff. It’s not drugs or nothing.’ Billy seemed to think I wanted to know what wasn’t in the box rather than what was.

  ‘Stuff? What, like guns?’

  ‘When did I ever use a gun…?’

  ‘All those Iraqis shoot themselves did they?’

  ‘I was in Afghanistan, and I’m a sparky. I was in the REME. I didn’t shoot anybody. I fixed the guns so that other folk could do the shooting.’

  The Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers was a fine body of men whose recruiting officer must have been having a duvet-day when William Paris took the Queen’s shilling. It had taken seventeen years and a commissioned officer’s fractured nose for Her Majesty to come to her senses and discharge Billy dishonourably from further service.

  ‘Knives, then?’

  Billy rolled his eyes. ‘That was ages ago and I never got done for it. You should know, you were there. Not proven. Same thing as not guilty.’

  It was the end of another hard week, and I’d promised my dad I’d be home to make Tina’s tea. ‘Listen, Billy. Stop wasting my time and tell me what’s in it.’

  Billy held up a hand, as though swearing an oath. ‘No guns, no blades, no drugs. And nothing stolen,’ he added, reading my mind. ‘It’s just some personal things I can’t keep at my place.’

  ‘You’ve got a place?’ It turned out he had: a homeless hostel in Dunfermline.

  ‘It’s temporary. I like to keep on the move and I can’t leave anything lying about up there. The place is full of junkies. They’d steal the steam off your pish.’

  I wasn’t buying any of it. Even a light-fingered Fifer rattling for his next fix wasn’t going to take the chance of being caught nicking from Big Billy. Not unless they fancied making the headlines next morning.

  He sighed again. Hugely. ‘A hundred. I’ll give you it when I come back for the box.’

  I gave one of the cardboard sides a prod with my finger. One hundred pounds to warehouse a box of personal belongings? If he’d offered me twenty I might have believed him. But a hundred? No, there was more to it than that. This was Billy Paris. I’d have to be as mad as he was not to think there was something extremely dodgy going on.

  There was a knock on the door and Grace-Mary, my secretary, came in wearing her coat. She stared disapprovingly over the top of her specs at Billy and his box and asked me if she could have a quick word.

  ‘That’s me away home,’ she said after I’d followed her through to reception. ‘I’m minding my granddaughter tonight and need to leave sharp,’ she added, as though she wasn’t off and running at the stroke of five every night.

  ‘Then let me be the first to wish you bon voyage and God speed.’

  ‘You might not want to look quite so happy about everything,’ Grace-Mary said.

  Why not? I was one client away from the weekend.

  ‘I’ve just had SLAB on the phone about last week’s inspection.’ Suddenly that Friday feeling evaporated. ‘They want to go over a few files with you.’

  ‘Files? Which ones?’

  The Scottish Legal Aid Board’s compliance and audit inspectors carried out regular inspections of those lawyers registered to provide Criminal Legal Aid. Fraud was practically non-existent, but the inspectors had to justify their existence someway or other and were famed for their strict adherence to a set of regulations which, unlike the legal aid hourly rate, changed frequently and with little warning.

  ‘You know how they sent us an advance list of files they wanted to examine?’

  I did. I’d spent much of the previous weekend going through those files, turning each one into a SLAB auditor’s dream, stuffed full of attendance notes fully time-recorded and in duplicate.

  Grace-Mary winced. ‘When the lady from SLAB turned up on Monday you were out at court, or otherwise making yourself scarce.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She gave me another list.’

  Another list? I didn’t understand.

  ‘A different list,’ Grace-Mary clarified.

  I didn’t like the way this was going. ‘But you wouldn’t have given her the files on that different list. Not before I’d had a chance to look them over.’ Which was to say pad them out with all the bits of paper the SLAB boys and girls wanted to see.

  She sniffed and fumbled in her raincoat pocket for a scarf.

  ‘No, Grace-Mary, you would have told the witch-woman from SLAB that those other files she wanted were out of the office, in storage, destroyed by flood or fire, orbiting the moon or something. You wouldn’t have—’

  ‘I couldn’t stop her.’ Grace-Mary stiffened, buttoned up her coat. ‘I went out of the room for a moment and when I came back she was raking around in the filing cabinets, hauling out files.’

  ‘You left her alone in my office?’

  ‘I was making her a cup of tea—’

  Tea? For SLAB compliance? That was like Anne Frank’s mum handing round the schnapps before showing the Gestapo up to the attic.

  ‘Yes, I made her tea. Why not? I make tea for all your thieves, murderers, robbers and goodness knows who else.’ Grace-Mary, my dad and Sheriff Albert Brechin shared similar views when it came to the presumption of innocence.

  ‘Firstly, Grace-Mary, those thieves, murderers and robbers you refer to are alleged thieves, murderers and robbers. There’s nothing alleged about SLAB compliance. Everyone knows they’re a shower of bastards. And, secondly, those thieves, murderers and robbers are keeping me in not trying to put me out of business.

  Grace-Mary said nothing, just looked down at her desk and the small green tin box sitting on it. By the time her eyes were fixed on mine again I already had a one pound coin in my hand.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before now?’ I asked, dropping the money into the swear box. It didn’t have far to fall.

  ‘I was hoping the files would be okay.’

  ‘Okay? Why would they be okay? You know I don’t have time to do a double-entry attendance note every time I meet a client for five minutes or make a trip to the bog!’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to start raising your voice…’ Grace-Mary yanked a woolly scarf from her coat pocket and whipped it around her neck, almost taking my eye out with the corner. ‘I’ve put the appoint
ment in your diary. See you Monday.’ She strode off down the corridor performing an about-turn after only a couple of steps. ‘And I’ve put a bring-back in as well so you’ll remember that Vikki Stark comes back from the States a week on Monday.’

  A seven day bring-back to remind me of my own girlfriend’s return from a trip abroad? As if I needed it. Vikki, legal adviser for a private adoption agency, was off on a two-week lecture tour of America. She and I were now officially an item. Our relationship hadn’t exactly been torrid thus far, our times together infrequent, interrupted by work commitments or with Tina there or thereabouts, cramping what little style I had. The last few months had been hectic for me. First discovering that I was a father and then having to try and act like one. Keeping a romance going on top of that wasn’t easy. So we’d been taking it slow.

  Once Grace-Mary had bustled off, I returned to my room to find Billy Paris standing on my desk fiddling with the fluorescent light strip. It had been flickering for ages so I’d been making do with an arthritic, angle-poise lamp.

  ‘Problems?’ Billy asked, when I returned to my office.

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ I said, wishing I believed that. ‘By the way, what do you think you’re doing?’

  He jumped down and went over to the light switch on the wall. After a couple of practice blinks the fluorescent light came on and stayed on. ‘Your starter’s knackered,’ he said. ‘I’ve sorted it with a piece of chewing gum wrapper, but there’s nothing for it - you’re going to have to splash out fifty-pence on a new one.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘and talking of money, I think you were saying something about two hundred pounds.’

  The big man winked at me and his features carved out a grin, revealing teeth, most of them molars. At least he’d disposed of his wad of gum. ‘You’re a good man, Robbie,’ he said. ‘You’ll not regret it.’

  That’s when I knew to say no thanks. If Big Billy Paris was ready to shell out two hundred quid for me to babysit a cardboard box, whatever was inside had to be extremely valuable. Extremely valuable and/or extremely illegal.