I smiled. ‘You just don’t like drinking alone.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind. I’m good at it.’
‘What, then?’
‘Five wee boys vanished. We found one, dead. This is a habit. If Hugh didn’t do it, who did? It will happen again.’
‘You want us to play detective?’
‘I want Slattery’s head on a plate.’
‘OK Salome, nothing would make me happier.’
She inspected my face for irony. ‘Are you serious? If you are, I am.’
I sighed. ‘Sure. Why not? I’ve got enough bones to pick with him.’
She sat down facing me rubbing her face dry with the dish towel. ‘All right. Where do we start?
I realised I was already prepared for that question. ‘At the beginning. When you got in involved. You told me before that you shouldn’t have been given the job. It didn’t add up. Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong direction. Talk me through the process. I mean, tell me how you were appointed.’
She stared at me for a bit longer then nodded her head. ‘I’ll make tea.’
‘It’s all about contacts,’ she said. ‘First, you need to be a member of the Faculty of Advocates, headed by the Dean. We all work as independents but we belong to one of twelve groups or stables. The most senior are King’s Counsel. Normally, KCs get the toughest roles but it’s not mandatory. Though I’m not yet a KC, I’ve been around. I’ve served often enough as junior counsel. It’s not unusual in itself that I was given this work.’
‘Who decides?’
‘Strictly speaking, you get instructions from a solicitor. In this case my old firm were given the case, as a pro bono.’
‘So it was normal to come to you, an old girl of the firm?’
‘Partly, but it’s not clear why they were chosen as Hugh’s solicitors in the first place. And they could easily have picked someone more senior and experienced.’
‘So how does an advocate get selected?’
‘It’s not that formal. You have to serve your time, of course, and senior advocates and judges are always keeping an eye on you. Most of it gets done in the corridors of the Advocates’ Library in Parliament House. Or over a glass of Scotch in the Glasgow and Edinburgh clubs.’
‘ That’s why you practice.’ I nodded at the whisky glasses on the sideboard.
‘That’s for my own sanity. They don’t let women in those clubs. I stand more chance of making Pope. It’s just a wonder they thought of me at all, far less assigned me to lead on a capital case.’
‘Your father’s reputation?’
‘That’s all I can think of. I’m not such a high flyer, you know.’
‘I rather think you are, but you need more than talent to succeed in this game. Still and all, it’s not exactly a favour to drop this one on you. So, there are two possibilities. Either someone thought that no one would blame you if you didn’t get Hugh off, given the sheer weight of evidence. And that you’d come out looking plucky and smart but not having lost anything. A kind of salute to your father.’
‘Or?’
‘Or someone didn’t want to take any risk that Hugh would get off.’
Her face flushed. ‘By giving it to someone incompetent!’
‘No! And I’m not going to butter you up any more than I already have by saying how wonderful you are. You know you are. You’re not a bad lawyer either.’ I smiled.
She threw her tea towel at me. ‘Sod!’
‘Sam, can you find out who put your name up? Because maybe if we knew that, we’d know why.’
She stared into her cup, looking for her future. ‘I should have done this before, shouldn’t I? I didn’t want to find out, Brodie. I just wanted to believe I was good enough. That my father would have been proud. Do you understand?’
‘Only too well.’
‘I’ll make some calls. It’s time I did some more socialising. What will you do?’
‘Go to the bank. I need cash.’ My heart sank at the prospect, not just because I would be dipping into my meagre savings but because of the sheer amount of bureaucratic effort involved in cashing a cheque at a bank other than my own in far-off South London.
‘I can help. You can still be on the case. They pay from public funds.’
‘You’ve been more than generous. But I think that that case is over. This is personal. But if you’d let me stay on a week or two?’
Her cheeks went pink. ‘Of course, Brodie. Your old room’s yours for as long as it takes.’ If I read that right she was saying that the old arrangements – prior to last night – would hold good too.
‘Could I borrow a pad of paper?’
She delved in her briefcase, which sat on the sideboard, and plonked a lined foolscap pad in front of me. She retrieved a propelling pencil and rubber and handed them to me.
I drew five circles on the pad and started to write names into each. I pointed to each one in turn.
‘I’m going to find out what links the late Father Cassidy, Hugh Donovan, Glasgow’s Finest, Mrs Reid and the Slatterys.’
‘You think the police are bound up in this?’
‘I know they’re incompetent. They’re also arrogant and pigheaded and would rather do time in Barlinnie than admit they’re wrong. Some of them are surely taking back-handers to turn a blind eye to drug-dealing in the city. But it doesn’t explain their sheer monumental cussedness over the murders of Father Cassidy and Mrs Reid. Nor why they should be so ready to see Hugh Donovan swing for a murder he didn’t commit.’
I drew a sixth circle. I put a question mark in the centre.
‘This is for you to fill in. Someone in the judiciary picked you. We need to know who and why.’
She nodded. She leaned over the table and pointed at the pad, at the two circles embracing Mrs Reid and the Slatterys.
‘We’re pretty sure they killed her. We’re also pretty sure it was to stop her testifying about what she heard and who she heard the night before Hugh’s arrest. But what’s the link between these two?’ She pointed at the Slatterys and Father Cassidy. ‘Why would they kill him?’
‘He must have been a risk to them. If Cassidy was the mystery man that brought Hugh home that night, he probably knew something about the real murderer. Presumably one of the Slattery clan. Did the good Father Cassidy learn something in the confessional? Or was he actively involved with these thieves and murderers? What possible service could a Catholic priest be giving to a bunch of gangsters? And if so, why would they want to kill him now?’
‘Do you really think he told them about your Arran trip?’
‘Who else? No one else knew. One day he arranges for me to be tossed off a boat, the next he’s found hanging naked in his own chapel. What happened? I’m certain it wasn’t suicide. Was he going to turn King’s evidence against the Slatterys? And if so, why? A pointing finger from the Virgin Mary or a sudden glimpse of the fires of hell?’
‘But how did he get involved in this mess?’
‘If we knew that…’
‘How are we going to find out?’
‘I wish I knew.’
THIRTY-THREE
Sometimes you need a bit of luck. Mostly it appears out of the blue, looking like a ten-bob note when what you needed was a fiver. But sometimes luck flings itself at you like a long-lost love. Propitiously, it came the next day, May Day, summer’s harbinger, in the form of an early-morning knock on the door. Sam and I were up and about, having risen from our chaste beds. I wondered if she’d lain awake waiting for footsteps on the landing as long as I had?
Sam took the door. I heard a man’s voice and Sam ushering someone into the library. She called out to me to join her. I came in from the kitchen. Sam was standing with her arms folded. A man stood fidgeting in front of her, turning his hat round and round in his hands. You would never normally confuse him with Lady Luck. Anger swept through me.