Last Resort (7 page)

Seven

W
hen I was very young, I regarded a direct instruction from my father as a basis for negotiation; since I’ve been an adult my attitude has hardened.

I’d heard what he said about not going after Mr Linton Baillie, but I knew full well what Pops would be doing if he was in the same country as the man.

At the very least, I was going to track him down. But first things first; he had asked me to do three specific things for him and they had priority.

I was at home alone when he called me; that was probably just as well, for Andy would have wanted to know what was up and either I’d have lied and said, ‘Nothing,’ or I’d have told him to mind his own business, or I’d have told him the truth.

None of these would have been good, but the last would have been the worst of all, because that would have made it official. He always did his best to draw a line between home and work, as did I, but if he knew the substance and implications of the call that I had received, the distinction might have been blurred, and he might have felt duty bound to do something about it.

Chief Constable Andrew Martin: the badges of his new rank still sit uncomfortably on the shoulders of the black tunic uniform that he’s taken to wearing.

To be frank, I haven’t quite got my head round the truth that the guy I’ve known since I was a kid is the top cop in Scotland, that he’s in the job that was sure to be my father’s until he stunned the Scottish media, and a few other people too, by withdrawing his candidacy.

Publicly, Dad offered no reason for his decision. Privately, within the family, he said that when my half-brother Ignacio is revealed as his son, once he’s done his time, the inevitable headlines would make his position untenable.

I’ve never believed a word of that excuse. My old man’s come through bigger crises than that and swatted them aside. He’ll never admit it, not even in the official memoirs that he’s been offered a lot of money to write, but the day that he was persuaded to put on a chief constable’s uniform, by people who didn’t really know him at all, was the day he started to feel something that he’d never encountered before in his life . . . boredom.

When the Strathclyde force that he headed, however briefly, passed into history, and his job disappeared, friends and former colleagues felt sorry for him. I didn’t, I felt relieved, because I knew that finally he could get back to being who he wanted to be . . . once he’d figured out who that is.

I knew that, because I find myself in the same situation.

My father’s life and my own mirror each other. We were both young achievers, professionally. We were both emotional disaster areas. We both walked away from established relationships, me with Andy, Dad with my stepmother Sarah: in his case that was a major mistake.

Down the road, we both got back to where we had been, albeit after causing pain to other people. Andy was a lousy husband to his wife, Karen, and I have to accept some blame for that, whatever they both say.

Dad was as bad with Aileen, in his brief third marriage, because he’d never left Sarah, in his heart. Okay, Aileen gave him grief too, but it doesn’t absolve him.

Me? As good as I am as a lawyer, I was at least twice as bad at romance.

But it’s in my professional life that once again I find myself as a reflection of my father.

As a law student, I had dreams of following him, not by joining the police force, but by becoming an advocate specialising in criminal work, just as he has done as a cop. However, after I graduated, I found myself, not manoeuvred . . . that would be too strong a word because it implies deviousness . . . but steered by him towards a trainee place with Curle Anthony and Jarvis, a big Edinburgh firm, and one which does purely civil work.

Before I knew it, I was fully qualified and on the ladder to promotion as a corporate solicitor. Before I knew it I’d been made a partner, one of CAJ’s youngest ever, and was winning gongs. Before I knew it, I was ‘Young Lawyer of the Year’, followed by the ludicrously titled ‘Dealmaker of the Year’ . . . whatever the hell that means, for it’s nothing to me.

All that success, and the big money I was earning, blinded me for a while to an uncomfortable truth: just like my dad, in his big remote offices, in Edinburgh and later in Glasgow, I was bored.

It dawned on me one night, after dinner with Andy at his place beside the Water of Leith. We were discussing our careers and our ambitions. His was quite clear: he wanted to succeed my father eventually as head of the Scottish police service.

‘Okay, now you,’ he said, after making his declaration.

I sat there nestling against him, listening to the little river ripple past beneath the balcony; I looked into the future, and I saw . . .

‘Nothing,’ I heard myself murmur. I was as if I’d been disembodied, for a moment, but I returned to myself pretty quick.

‘I don’t have one. I can’t have one; all that’s open to me is being head of the Corporate Department, which could well happen in five years. Beyond that, I suppose I’ll be a candidate to chair the practice once Mitch Laidlaw retires, if he ever does.

‘But Andy, I don’t want either of those jobs,’ I confessed. ‘That means that all I can see in my future, as we sit here, is another thirty years of fucking deal-making, of helping people with lots of money make even more money!’

He eased himself away and stared at me, his green eyes wider than usual. ‘I had no idea you felt that way,’ he exclaimed.

‘Neither had I,’ I confessed, ‘until this very moment.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘What can I do about it? I have commitments.’

‘You could have more; we could have kids.’

That is dangerous ground between the two of us, and I chose not to disturb it. ‘That’s a separate issue,’ I replied. ‘It wouldn’t affect my career, not these days.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘I don’t know.’

And I didn’t, not until my father did what he did, and showed me the way forward. One week after he pulled his application papers from the Police Scotland job, I went into Mitchell Laidlaw’s office and achieved what I’d thought was impossible. I took my urbane, unblinking, all-knowing boss completely by surprise.

‘I’m leaving the practice,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to practise as a solicitor advocate. I want rights of audience in the Supreme Court.’

Mitch is the best lawyer I know, and one of the best thinkers; every word he utters has a point to it. It took him a full minute to frame a response.

‘You can do that within this firm, Alex,’ he said. ‘I’ve been considering adding that string to CAJ’s bow for some time now, having counsel in-house, and moving away from employing them as the need arises. Complete the training, and I’ll transfer you to the Litigation Department. You can replace Jocky Scott as senior partner there when he retires.’

‘I’m sorry, Mitch,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t want to do civil law. I want to establish a criminal practice.’

That’s when his mouth fell open and he stepped out of character. ‘What?’ he gasped. ‘You’re going to hawk yourself around the detention cells, like Frances Birtles and her crew?’

I smiled at his surprise. ‘Think of it as me setting up in opposition to my father and my partner. They lock them up, I’ll get them out.’

He fell silent for another minute, before saying, ‘Then God help the Crown Office. The prosecution’s in for a hard time.’

My partnership agreement specified six months’ notice, but as I’d expected, Mitch put me on gardening leave as soon as I had handed over all my existing work; I don’t have a garden, but that stuff is complex and confidential and couldn’t be left with someone who was heading for the exit.

That evening, I told Andy what I’d done, and he was fine with it; after our head-to-head discussion, it didn’t come as a surprise to him. As for my father, to avoid him trying to talk me out of it, as I knew he would, I explained my absence from CAJ by telling him that I was on a training course . . . as indeed I was, for the advocacy exams that were due in February.

He swallowed the cover story, and even gave me my first assignment without knowing it. When Ignacio was arrested in Spain and extradited to Scotland, accused of doing in his granny, Dad asked me to put together his defence team.

Although my first criminal client was my half-brother, I was able to keep our relationship secret, even from his counsel, the aforementioned Frances Birtles QC. She’s the go-to solicitor advocate in Scotland, the woman I plan to become.

‘Why you?’ she asked, when I approached her. ‘Since when did corporate whizz-kids get their hands dirty with criminal work?’

‘I was born with that kind of grime under my fingernails,’ I told her. ‘No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t scrub it away.’

Frankie did a brilliant job of defending Ignacio, but even she was surprised when the Crown accepted a plea to culpable homicide, and again when the judge suspended half of his four-year sentence. If she suspected that another pleader had been at work, she was shrewd enough to keep that to herself and bask in the media glory of her latest triumph.

When Dad had finished briefing me on his latest problem, I went straight to my desk and switched on my computer. Linton Baillie wasn’t hard to find, as an author. A search showed work on Amazon, and on the websites of two other online retailers. I went to the first, because I have an account, and looked at his page.

There were three books listed, each with a garish title, and blood featuring heavily in its jacket design. Reader reviews gave three of them five stars, with the others scoring four and three and a half . . . a dodgy guideline, when you consider that Amazon readers also give four plus ratings to Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
and even to
Struwwelpeter
, the only book I’ve ever read that I believe should be banned.

I skimmed through Baillie’s synopses; one of them seemed to be set in gangland London, one was a biography of a Glasgow crime lord with a brutish nickname, and the third purported to ‘unveil the deadly hand of the British security services in unsolved homicides’.

London didn’t seem immediately relevant so I bought the last two . . . 
Where the Bodies are Buried
and
The Public Executioner
 . . . in eBook form.

While I waited for them to download on to my Kindle, I did a little more Googling. Dad had told me that Sauce Haddock hadn’t come up with any images of the man, but I was looking for something else, for anything that might help me locate him.

Normally if you enter an individual’s name into a search engine, you will come up with a website that gives you locations for everyone of that name in the UK, then offers to sell you the details.

‘Linton Baillie’ came up with nothing; while there were plenty of Linton references, and even more for Baillie, it seemed that if the person I was after lived in Britain, he wasn’t on the electoral roll, and he wasn’t a telephone subscriber.

The one thing that I did know about him was that he had a publisher. All his books had the same imprint, Donside. I searched for that and came up with a website. It was London-based, and seemed to specialise in non-fiction; it didn’t offer an extensive catalogue but there was an address, in Titchfield Street, and a phone number that I would use when I was ready.

There was nothing else I could do there and then, and so I picked up my e-reader; it was a bit of a bugger, since I’d been approaching the conclusion of an enjoyable historical drama called
Mathew’s Tale
, but I knew where my duty lay and so I settled down for an evening with
The Public Executioner
.

Eight

I
woke at seven next morning, still in my armchair, in yesterday’s clothes with my Kindle in my lap. My head felt like mush, and my right leg was tucked under me. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, then blinked, trying to clear the former, while freeing the latter and stretching it out, pulling my toes towards me in a vain attempt to fight off a pins and needles feeling so severe that I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand for a while.

I was prepared to say one positive thing about Linton Baillie: he knew how to hold the reader’s attention. Some of his allegations seemed far-fetched and poorly sourced, and his crime scene descriptions were graphic to say the least, but he had a decent prose style.

I’d finished the Secret Service exposé, which read like a series of
Spooks
episodes, and I’d been almost through the gangster yarn when I’d fallen asleep. That had been strewn with west of Scotland crime ‘faces’, as Baillie described them. None of them meant anything to me, not until a character from Edinburgh made his presence felt.

When I was a child, my dad never talked to me about his work, but when I reached my mid-teens he began to loosen up. A man called Tony Manson featured in a couple of his stories, and they didn’t have a happy ending. While Mr Manson was one of Edinburgh’s most notorious criminal figures, he must have been as good at his job as Bob Skinner was at his, if not better, for he was one of the very few that my father was never able to put away.

It took someone else to do that, a man who crossed him in business, then stabbed him to death in his mansion in the west of Edinburgh.

He’ll deny it now, and always will, but Dad was affected by Manson’s death. When I pressed him on the subject, all he would say was, ‘Tony Manson had his own rules. There was a degree of perverse morality about them and he lived by them. I wanted to see him in prison, yes, but not dead.’

‘You mean you liked him?’ I persisted.

‘No, I did not,’ he insisted, vehemently. ‘But criminality is a fact of life. When we put someone away, that’s it; but when a guy is taken out, as Manson was, you don’t celebrate too hard, because it creates a vacuum, and you know how nature feels about those.’

Manson was more than a peripheral figure in Baillie’s story; if the author’s assertion was correct, he was responsible for the murder of Gerry McGarrity, the oldest son of James McGarrity, the Godfather figure in the yarn. He seemed to disappear from the narrative after that intervention, but I still had a few chapters to go.

They could wait till later, I decided. I had things to do that day and I needed to look and feel presentable. To shake the stiffness out of my bones, and work off those pins and needles, I put on my thermals, my tracksuit and my trainers, and headed off for a run.

Leaving my apartment block, I jogged past the Scottish parliament building and into Holyrood Park. The morning was crisp and cold, and frost lay on the ground, but the pathway was lit well enough to be safe, and there was enough of a moon in the clear sky to let me see where I was going.

I wasn’t alone; the Queen’s Park is a popular location for runners and even at that hour the footprints of up to half a dozen people could be seen in the hoary white crystals.

I added mine to them, heading past Dynamic Earth, and
The Scotsman
office, then up the steep incline that leads towards the Dalkeith Road exit. On the way I passed three of the earlier runners on the way back. They seemed to be having problems with the frost on the way downhill, so I decided not to take that risk, leaving the park instead and choosing a longer way home.

As I ran, I contemplated several things.

I thought of my relationship with Andy, which had become just as comfortable as it was first time around.

Back then, he had visions of a perfect family unit with two kids, boy first, girl second; I had visions of an uninterrupted legal career until I turned thirty, after which I might get around to the children thing.

When I got careless and found myself pregnant at least eight years ahead of schedule, I had a termination. Andy was never meant to find out, but he did, and that was the end of us, for that time.

When we came together again, each of us had been wounded, and, far worse, had hurt others. We’d both learned from that, and second time around, we’d promised to be more considerate towards each other.

Andy’s dynastic ambitions have been realised; he has two kids . . . girl first, boy second, but nobody’s perfect. I’ve hit the thirty mark, but the only broodiness I feel is for the new career I’m planning.

We’re both career-driven people, and our unspoken pact was that my job, whatever that might be, is as important as Andy’s, however high and mighty he’s become, no more, no less . . . or so I thought.

Running past St Leonard’s Police Office, my mind turned inevitably to my father.

Poor Dad: a few weeks ago I was in the Cafe Royal’s Circle Bar with Andy when we overheard . . . it was impossible not to . . . a loud-mouthed quantity surveyor in the midst of a crowd of his old school chums. (Why do people wear ties that advertise their education?)

‘Hey,’ he boomed, gleefully, to his conscripted audience, ‘what do you think of the mighty Bob Skinner? It looks as if he’s having a mid-life crisis, does it not?’

Andy went across to the group and had a quiet word in the clown’s ear. They quietened down and left shortly afterwards. It was a pre-emptive strike by my partner; if he hadn’t intervened I might have torn the guy a new one and he’d have been obliged to arrest me!

If the idiot had chosen to pursue his point, I’d have told him that my dad’s been having mid-life crises since his mid-twenties. I know this because I’ve been witness to most of them, having been raised by him as a single parent since my mother’s early death.

When I passed that police office on that cold morning I realised that I was happier for him than I have ever been. Okay, he was still confused about his future, hence the trip to Spain, but for the first time in his adult life he had the chance to be truly his own master.

He’s served the public for more than thirty years, often at great personal risk, and nearly always with emotional consequences.

He’s always been there for me, and I’ll always be there for him.

My eyes were misty with unexpected tears as I passed the Pleasance; I blinked them away as I took the turn that led me back home, and began to plan my day. It had the potential to be a long one, and it would involve travel.

As I stepped out of the lift and into my top-floor apartment, it was still a couple of minutes short of eight o’clock, and the day had yet to dawn, but I felt wide awake, for all my unconventional night’s sleep.

The indicator light on my phone showed a voice message; I picked up the handset and took it with me into the bathroom. I reviewed it, as soon as I’d stripped off my running gear, and just before stepping into the shower compartment.

I’d expected it to be Andy, calling before he left for Glasgow to confirm our tentative arrangement that I’d cook dinner at his place that evening, or possibly my dad, who sometimes forgets time zone differences, ringing to tell me once again not to pursue Linton Baillie.

I had not expected it to be Mia Sparkles.

She and I had been in contact during Ignacio’s trial and prosecution, but only out of necessity. The woman was in my life very briefly when I was a teenager, and I do not want her back any more than she has to be. By rights she should have gone to jail along with her son, but by some miracle there had been no evidence to corroborate her admission that she’d helped him dump her mother’s body, and without that the Crown Office had been unable to charge her. As it played out, Cornton Vale Prison’s loss was the Dundee listening public’s gain.

Her voice gave the lie to her radio name; there was nothing twinkling or vivacious about it, instead she sounded tired and rattled.

‘Alex,’ the message began, ‘I’m sorry to be calling so early, but I phoned your father and he said I should. He says he told you about the call I had on air yesterday, from this man Linton. I’ve had another, on my home phone this time. Please call me back.’

Standing naked in my en suite, with perspiration cooling on my body, I chose the recall option on the messenger menu and waited.

‘This is Alex,’ I said, probably a little testily, as soon as she answered.

‘Thanks for calling back.’ Mia sounded calmer than she had a few seconds before. ‘I don’t know what Bob thinks you can do about this, but anything you can will be welcome.’

‘I’m going to be in touch with the institution later,’ I told her. ‘The more I can give them the better. Tell me about this call. When did you receive it?’

‘At seven o’clock,’ she replied. ‘The bastard woke me. My home number’s ex-directory, Alex. How the hell did he get it?’

‘Bribery sounds like a reasonable guess to me. A guy like this has contacts.’

‘A guy like what? Do you know something about him?’

‘Yes, but tell me what he said.’

‘Very little,’ she replied. ‘He didn’t have to tell me who was calling, not after his first few words; I recognised his voice straight off. “You got the message, I take it.” That was how he began. I asked him what exactly that message was, and he said, “I know your whole story: you and Skinner, and your boy. I want to talk to you.”

‘I said, “And I want you to fuck off and leave me alone, or I’ll have you done for harassing me.” He laughed. He laughed at me, Alex! “Do you think Skinner will let you do that?” he asked me. “Does he want it all to come out, and does he want his son identified to every hard kid in Polmont Young Offenders? If he is, he’ll have an arsehole like the Clyde Tunnel by the time he comes out, that’s if he makes it out alive.”

‘Come on, Alex, tell me. Who is this man? He doesn’t know who he’s messing with. He doesn’t realise I’m descended from a line of psychos on my mother’s side.’

This was not Mia Sparkles as her fans know her.

‘Will you calm down,’ I snapped, ‘and cease the hysterical threats. I know who and what he is, but that’s all at the moment; “where” has still to be determined. Obviously he has an agenda, but we have no idea what that is, not yet. I’m dealing with this for Dad, Mia, and keeping Ignacio safe is my first priority. After I’ve done that, I’ll try to answer all the other questions. All I ask of you is that you let me get on with it; I definitely do not want you getting involved.’

I paused to give that time to sink in.

‘Okay,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll trust you, for now. How can I help?’

‘You can begin by telling me how your call ended. Did you agree to meet him?’

‘Hell no. It ended with me slamming the phone down, after I’d promised to rip his scrotum off.’

‘Did you check last caller number on your phone?’

‘No, sorry, I wasn’t thinking that straight. I didn’t and when you called me back, it’ll have wiped it out.’

‘Pity . . . although the chances are he used a public phone, as he did yesterday. If he contacts you again . . .’

‘Do you think he will?’

‘If he really does want to talk to you, there’s every chance. If he does, I want you to agree to it . . . but,’ I added, heavily, ‘only in person, not over the phone. Make an arrangement, let me know straightaway and I’ll be there too. What you said earlier was true; he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.’

‘What can you do to him?’ she asked, with a trace of scorn.

‘I’m a lawyer, Mia. I can rip his balls off too, but I can do it through the court, and through his wallet.’

She laughed at that notion, and our discussion ended more calmly than it had begun.

An hour later I was showered, breakfasted and in my car, heading for Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution, where the Scottish government locks up seriously bad boys under the age of twenty-one. They don’t call it a prison, but it is; I’d been there on a few occasions as Ignacio’s lawyer while he was on remand, and once after he’d been sentenced. I’d never been to a prison before; I know already that it’s the one part of my new career that I am not going to like.

I was expected; I’d prepared the way by phoning the Governor (yes, they still use that archaic title) and asking for an urgent meeting on behalf of my client, Ignacio Centelleos.

His secretary had begun by offering me ten minutes at ten o’clock next morning.

‘Bring that forward by twenty-four hours, and you’ll meet my concept of urgency,’ I told her. ‘It’s a matter of personal security.’

People in my former professional world did not sigh and say, ‘Hmph!’ but she did, followed by a very grudging, ‘Hold on.’

I did, until she came back on line, with another sigh, and said, ‘Very well, Mr Kemp will see you, but for five minutes, maximum, that’s all, Miss . . . er?’

‘Skinner; Alexis Skinner. Ms.’

I took the West Approach Road out of Edinburgh rather than risk being caught in traffic on its tedious bypass, and reached Newbridge and the motorway with time in hand to make my appointment without putting my foot down too hard. Before police unification, speed enforcement used to vary from force to force, but since my dear Andy has been in charge of the whole bloody country, it’s uniformly rigorous. Given our history, any speeding tickets I get would be irrevocable for me and potentially embarrassing for him.

Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution has been part of the Scottish prison system for over a hundred years, and some of it was in use before that as a private school; nevertheless it presents a modern face to visitors.

I left my eco-friendly hybrid sports car in the visitors’ car park, and went through security, where a couple of the female staff recognised me from previous visits. They’d been told to expect me, and to escort me straight to the Governor’s office.

I’d never met Christopher Kemp before, but my father had mentioned him on a few occasions, their paths having crossed when he was Governor of Saughton Prison in Edinburgh.

He didn’t stand up when his po-faced secretary showed me into his room. His considerable bulk stayed firmly lodged in his big executive swivel rocker, behind his big desk, as he pointed at a straight-backed chair on the other side.