Bad Debt Read online

  The rain was still hammering down when the limo pulled up outside the Red Corner Bar. As the three of us alighted and hurried into the pub out of the rain, Sammy put a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘I’m having to wind up Eddie’s side of things,’ he said. ‘Once I’ve finished off his work in progress, the accountants will do the rest so that Wilma and the kids get what’s due to them. He was semi-retired, and there’s not that much to sort out. Most of it I can handle myself, but . . .’

  I wondered why Sammy thought it necessary to confide his business affairs in me. I was soon to find out.

  ‘I’ve got a wee favour to ask you, Robbie,’ he said, as, single file, we followed in Malky’s slipstream, forcing our way through the crowd of happy mourners, on the scent of free whisky. ‘Eddie’s got this jury trial set to start soon—’

  ‘How soon?’ I asked, sensing the direction things were going.

  ‘Day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Wednesday?’

  ‘Or possibly Thursday. Has to be called in by Friday or it’ll time-bar. Who knows? It might not even start.’

  That was the trouble with jury trials; they seldom started when you thought they would. When they didn’t, you were left with a diary like a desert. When they did, it meant you were tied up for days. For a one-man-band like mine it caused havoc with the business calendar.

  ‘It’s in Livingston,’ Sammy said. ‘Your stamping ground. The case has dragged on for nearly a year. I know there’s not that much time to prepare, but I thought you could maybe step in.’ He sensed my hesitation. ‘Honestly, it’s a great defence.’

  I’d heard the it’s a great defence line many times. It was usually followed by it’s very straightforward, and shortly before I was presented with the sort of thing Wile E. Coyote might gift-wrap for the Roadrunner. ‘I’d like to help, Sammy, honestly, but—’

  ‘I’d owe you one, Robbie, and, seriously, you’ll thank me for it. I’m almost tempted to do it myself, but I’ve done no criminal work for years. I couldn’t find a jury in a courtroom these days, and Eddie would want me to instruct someone who knows what they’re doing. You’d have been his first choice.’

  While flattery has been known to work on me, this was one of Eddie Frew’s clients, and I was sure Eddie’s clients had expectations of acquittal directly proportional to the size of fee they paid. Just as I was sure they would not be magnanimous in defeat.

  ‘Of course he’ll do it,’ Malky said. He was of the same view after he’d barged his way to the bar, scooped up three drams and returned to my side. ‘Come on, Robbie. How can you refuse a dead man’s last request while you stand there drinking his whisky?’

  ‘Strictly speaking it’s the firm that’s paying for the drink,’ Sammy said. ‘And the food.’

  ‘There’s food?’ Malky stood on his tiptoes and looked around until he spied a trestle table heaving with pies, sandwiches and sausage rolls.

  ‘Who is this pal of Eddie’s that’s in bother?’ I asked, after my brother had gone off in search of sustenance.

  ‘Simon Keggie’s his name.’

  I knew the name from somewhere. ‘The MSP? The one who battered the housebreaker?’

  ‘He’s not an MSP. He’s Provost of West Lothian. That’s not to say he wouldn’t like to be an MSP. He stood in the election last year. The trouble is he’s a Tory.’

  I wondered why he’d even bothered. A Tory candidate in Linlithgow running for Parliament had about as much chance as Long John Silver running for a bus. In recent years the constituency had become an SNP stronghold, and before the Scottish Parliament, Tam Dalyell of Scottish Labour had been MP for over twenty years. Although there had been a recent Tory resurgence, they were still a long way short of the mark.

  ‘There was also the fact he was charged with assault the week before the election.’ Sammy shook his head sadly. ‘I really thought Keggie might have been in with a shout this time. The Labour candidate didn’t know if he supported Karl Marx or Groucho Marx, and Simon Keggie is well-liked as a councillor. Very hands on. He’s old school, and I don’t mean old private school. Keggie went to Linlithgow Academy and he used to work for a living, and he lives locally. He’s a man of the people.’

  There were no prizes for guessing who Sammy had voted for. Tories wore kilts too.

  ‘This has been a party-political broadcast on behalf of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. Being charged with assault on the eve of the election wouldn’t have helped his cause. Anyway, I thought the case would have been well over by now.’

  Sammy necked his drink and looked around for another one. ‘Simon was an old pal of Eddie’s, and he was determined to get him off.’

  ‘When you say Keggie was an old pal of Eddie’s . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Sammy said, reading my mind. ‘This is Eddie Frew we’re talking about. He didn’t do mates’ rates. The fee is all sorted out with the client.’

  ‘How much?’

  Sammy relayed the sort of hourly rate with which we at Munro & Co were entirely unfamiliar but would very much have liked to become better acquainted. ‘Two-thirds for you, one for me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to wet my beak.’

  For a legal aid lawyer, even two-thirds of the figure quoted was beyond the dreams of avarice.

  Sammy moved closer, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘What do you say, Robbie?’

  I looked at him through the fog of pound signs swimming before my eyes. There wasn’t much I could say, other than, raising my glass, ‘Here’s to Eddie.’

  2

  Since my brother and I had embarked on our new sports agency business venture, we’d had quite a few lunches together. To those mealtimes we’d invited promising young footballers, excited, but not nearly so excited as their parents, to be dining with former Glasgow Rangers and Scotland hero Malky Munro, at his favourite restaurant, Mr Singh’s India on Elderslie Street, Glasgow.

  So far, we hadn’t signed up any major prospects, but lived in hope. Malky was a great frontman. To our prospective clients he might be a relic from another age, a time of muddy pitches and scary tackles, but to their fathers, especially those of the blue, red and white variety, he was a legend. Most were ready to have their sons sign with Munro & Co before the dip of the first pakora, and as for the mums, when my brother turned on the charm full blast, any reservations melted like a dollop of yoghurt on a chicken phaal.

  It tended to be around coffee and mints, and, it has to be said, to noticeably less excitement from the mums and dads, that I’d be formally introduced into the proceedings to discuss what my brother referred to as ‘all the legal stuff’.

  Today was different. Our lunch guest had cancelled, so when Simon Keggie phoned for a pre-trial consultation, I’d invited him along instead. He’d brought his wife with him. I wouldn’t say she was mutton dressed as lamb, but there was a definite whiff of mint sauce about Mrs Keggie. Hair cut in a severe fringe that along with the heavily painted-on eyebrows gave her something of an Egyptian look. My first impression was of an ambitious, go-ahead woman looking to the future. Keggie, on the other hand, grey hair swept back with Brylcreem, dressed in blazer and cavalry twill slacks, seemed to me like a man who’d had a glimpse of the future, didn’t like it much and was happy to stay in the past.

  Keggie didn’t say a lot, and it was his wife who kept the chat going. If she’d come along because she was worried for her husband, she didn’t look it. Neither of them did. Still, it was a pleasant change to have lunch guests less interested in listening to Malky’s footballing anecdotes, than in what I had to say on the law. Not that we talked a great deal about the upcoming case. Keggie’s position was already known to me and set out in detail in the precognition Eddie Frew had taken from him at the start of the case. Lunch was just a chance for me to introduce myself and, I supposed, to reassure the client that his money was being well spent. If there’d been anything terribly confidential to discuss, I’d have told Malky not to bother comi
ng, but he’d made the booking and I was hoping he’d pay.

  ‘It’s terrible about Eddie,’ Keggie said, pushing his empty plate to one side. ‘So sudden. It’s good of you to step in.’

  Mrs Keggie smiled at me. ‘Mr Frew’s business partner was full of praise. He said you were the very man for the job,’ and with that she sat back in her chair, waiting for me to confirm that, for the job, I was indeed the very man.

  ‘Your husband has a fine defence,’ I said, ‘and I’m told the Crown aren’t bringing the jury in until Friday morning.’ I turned to my client once more. ‘If you’d like to meet up again tomorrow at my office in order to go over things more thoroughly—’

  ‘Do we need to?’ Keggie asked. ‘I spoke with Eddie a week or so before he died, and we went over things then. I don’t have anything to add and I’m sure you know the case inside out.’ He gave me a solid wink. ‘Eddie said it was a definite winner.’

  Typical Eddie. Tell the client they’re taking a walk, accept a large fee in advance and, when they get sent down, blame the jury and act surprised all the way to the bank. Personally, I’d always found predicting the outcome of a case to be a highly delicate business. Too optimistic and clients became blasé and appeared arrogant to the jury or, worse, were unappreciative of your efforts. Too pessimistic and they went off and found someone more optimistic. ‘Yes, you do have excellent prospects,’ I said, ‘but, of course, it’s a criminal trial, and anything can happen.’

  He squinted at me across the condiments as though I’d suddenly lapsed into a foreign language. His wife reached over and gave my wrist a gentle squeeze. ‘But anything won’t happen, will it, Mr Munro? Eddie assured us—’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Like I say, I can’t remember having had a better line of defence to present and am not thinking about anything other than an acquittal.’

  She smiled, looked down at the tiny face of her gold watch, folded her napkin and laid it alongside her plate.

  Keggie took the hint. Rising from the table he pulled his wife’s chair out for her and she floated to her feet.

  ‘I don’t think we need to meet again before the trial, Mr Munro,’ he said. ‘Pat and I . . .’ He put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘We have every confidence in you.’ He shook my hand, then, with a nod to Malky and without waiting for coffee, left the table, settling the bill on the way out.

  I watched him go. Was there ever a more perfect client? Not only a private fee-payer, but one with an actual defence.

  Malky set down his knife and fork and tugged the napkin out of his collar. ‘Let me get this straight. This Keggie guy struck somebody on the head with a baseball bat?’

  It hadn’t been a baseball bat. It had been a shillelagh walking stick, solid Irish blackthorn. Might as well have been an iron bar.

  ‘How many times did he hit him?’

  I wasn’t quite sure how many times. Enough times for the victim to just manage to stagger out of Keggie’s house, collapse in the street and subsequently be diagnosed with a linear fracture of the skull and a brain bleed that led to a medically induced coma. ‘Repeatedly,’ I said. ‘In law that could mean only twice.’

  ‘And was it twice?’

  ‘Possibly three or four.’ Malky raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay, perhaps plus VAT,’ I conceded.

  ‘And Sammy told you that’s a great defence?’

  Non-lawyers don’t understand what a great defence is. They think a great defence is being captured on CCTV having lunch with the Moderator of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh, while your alleged victim is being assaulted in Inverness. In reality, there’s no such thing as a truly great defence. If there was, there wouldn’t be a prosecution. For defence lawyers, just having a story to tell the jury was about as great as it got. I ripped a piece of naan, dipped it in the last of my curry sauce, swirled it around the plate and stuffed it in my face.

  ‘I’ll admit,’ I said, once there was room in my mouth for words, ‘that the defence may not seem all that great to you. But it’s sound enough, and what’s especially great is that the client is paying privately. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. I know I need to try and focus more on the sports agency side of things. It’s just a pity there isn’t more work coming in.’

  ‘Do you really think you can get him off?’ Malky asked.

  I shrugged. ‘It’s a criminal trial. Like I told Keggie, anything can happen. It’s pretty much fifty/fifty.’

  ‘But that’s not what you told him.’

  ‘I told him his prospects of an acquittal were good.’

  ‘No, you said they were excellent.’

  ‘Look at it this way,’ I said. ‘He’s at home one night, and someone breaks in—’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How did they break in?’

  ‘What is this? Cross-examination?’

  ‘No, I just wondered.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t that much of a break-in. It looks like he came through the front door.’

  ‘What? Smashed right through it?’

  ‘Simon Keggie lives in the sticks. He doesn’t always lock the door at night.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. You say this burglar—’

  ‘This is Scotland, Malky. We don’t have burglars, we have housebreakers.’

  ‘Whatever he is, you’re saying he just opened the door and waltzed into your client’s home?’

  ‘That’s right. And when confronted by this stranger in his own home, late at night, my client was scared, apprehensive, and fearful for his own safety,’ I said, in the same way I’d said it to Keggie over lunch, in the hope that he’d remember those words when it came time to give evidence. Once he hit the witness box he was on his own. I couldn’t put words into his mouth. No leading questions allowed. ‘You see, Malky, for a self-defence to work, three things have to be made out. Firstly, that the accused was fearful for his own safety, which you must admit is likely if a stranger comes swanning into your gaff at midnight.’

  Malky shrugged his concession to that point.

  ‘Secondly, without putting himself at a disadvantage, the accused must take any opportunity for escape without the need to resort to violence.’ I felt a jury would think it a bit much to ask a householder to flee his own home. It was the third criterion I felt was slightly lacking, and that was the use of proportionate force. Malky had noticed the chink in the defence too. He leaned forward across the table, and, lowering his voice, said, ‘Your guy whacked him repeatedly on the head with a big stick until his brain began to bleed. Was the burglar—’

  ‘Housebreaker.’

  ‘Intruder. Was he armed?’ He hadn’t been. ‘Then you’d have thought one hit, maybe even two would have been enough, but—’

  ‘Keggie panicked. What was he supposed to do?’ I asked, I hoped rhetorically.

  ‘Not smash his head in while he must have been trying to get away from your mental client,’ Malky said, swilling at a pint of Cobra lager.

  According to the medical reports, there had been minor injuries to the complainer’s back as well as to his head. ‘I suppose the intruder could have been running away . . .’ I said.

  ‘Of course he was running away.’ Malky set his pint down and wiped his mouth on a white linen napkin. ‘He walks into a house and your client starts in about him with a dirty big piece of wood. Sounds like a running-away situation to me.’

  ‘But he could have been running to find a weapon of his own,’ I said. ‘My client couldn’t take any chances. He reacted instinctively, and the walking stick was right there by the front door. You have to take into account the heat of the blood.’

  ‘The only blood seems to be coming out of the other guy’s head,’ Malky said.

  ‘What would you do in similar circumstances, ladies and gentlemen?’ I swept an arm at an imaginary jury, almost spilling Malky’s drink. ‘Until we could be assured all danger has definitely passed, who amongst us would not continue to protect ourselves, our family—’
br />   ‘Does he have any family?’

  ‘I don’t think there are any kids, but you saw his wife.’

  ‘I certainly did,’ Malky said. ‘Punching above his weight, isn’t he? Shouldn’t even be in the same ring. What is it about women and politicians? They’re all over them like skin on a dumpling.’

  ‘Mrs Keggie wasn’t well and in bed. Seriously, who’s going to find my sixty-year-old, no previous convictions client, guilty for assaulting a burglar in those circumstances?’ I said.

  Malky corrected me. ‘Don’t you mean, housebreaker? Although he could just have been someone who’d got a bit drunk, lost their way, walked into the wrong house – we’ve all been there.’

  ‘Not all of us, Malky.’

  ‘And you really think you’ll get him off?’

  ‘By the time I’m finished with the jury, they’ll probably award Keggie a medal,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’ll need to make tracks.’

  Malky reached out and grabbed the hand I’d put on the table, ready to push myself to my feet.

  ‘Sit down and have a coffee,’ he said. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  He frowned and stared down at his plate. He hadn’t been quite himself today. Unusually for him, he’d looked a tad worried. Not so worried that he hadn’t managed to tuck away a lamb tikka ambala with a haggis naan on the side, but worried nonetheless.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, when our plates had been cleared away and replaced by two coffees and a couple of after-dinner mints. ‘It’s not because of that painting again, is it?’

  On the wall of Mr Singh’s restaurant there was a large oil painting of a fantasy Scotland team, containing all the greats: Law, Greig, Baxter, Souness, Dalglish . . . but no place for big Malky Munro. It was something of a sore point, and no visit to the restaurant was complete without Malky making a sarcastic remark to a member of staff along the lines of how the artist must have confused his profile with that of Billy McNeil.