Crowner and Justice Read online

  Crowner and Justice

  Barrie Roberts

  © Barrie Roberts 2002

  Barrie Roberts has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2002 by Allison and Busby

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  PROLOGUE

  Nobody thinks about dying when they’re eighteen. Sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll is more like it. Dying is not on the agenda. Life is your credit card and it’s always someone else’s bill that comes in stamped AIDS’ or ‘car crash’ or ‘murder.’

  Sean McBride was eighteen so he wasn’t thinking about dying. Sean was thinking about a girl with long slender legs and soft lips and bright eyes and...he took out a cigarette, lit it and slid a bit lower in his seat, stretched his legs and breathed the smoke in deeply, smiling the fatuous grin of the contented. He thought about the girl again, about a weekend with her at his mate’s place in Yorkshire. They’d planned weekends before, but they’d never managed one. They weren’t going to make it this time, either, but he never found that out. Sean McBride was eighteen and he’d just begun dying faster than he’d ever expected.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Have you noticed how all those fictional detectives — Rebus, Jack Reacher, even Miss Marple — hate coincidences? Apart from the late Endeavour Morse, who thought his life was beset by coincidences. Sherlock Holmes said that, ‘Coincidence, Watson, is the willing handmaiden of a lazy mind.’ Well, the real detectives hate coincidences, too. I’ve heard Detective Inspector John Parry of the Central Midlands CID remark more than once that, ‘Coincidence stinks, boyo — like old fish.’ Not as neat, perhaps, but it makes the point.

  I never even noticed the coincidence in the first place. That was because I was too busy. My assistant, Alasdair, was on holiday; my articled clerk was sick; so there I was — stuck seeing clients.

  Sometimes I dream about being the kind of solicitor who never sees a client in the office. You know — like some of the big blokes in Brum. Toddle into the office about mid-morning. Get an assistant who will read the mail to tell you if there’s anything in it you ought to know. Make a few phone calls. Amble off to lunch for a few hours. Perhaps fetch up on the golf course. Meet a client there. Take a holdall full of drug money from him in the changing room. Launder it through your client account, and the next time you meet him will be on a beach in the Seychelles where you’re both spending your ill-gotten gains.

  There’s a theory that you can get high just from handling banknotes from rich lawyers — either from the cocaine they use or the heroin their clients peddle. It’s only a theory — nobody’s ever found a way of taking money from a rich lawyer.

  It doesn’t work like that down at my end of the market. Tyrolls, Solicitors, of Jubilee Buildings, Belston, West Midlands, is not into mid-morning arrivals, long lunches, golfing, money laundering or holidays in the Seychelles. We’re into early arrivals, late nights, missed lunches and short holidays if any. As to money laundering — well, once in a while we defend a drug-dealer. When we do, he applies for Legal Aid and gets it, while his profits are sprouting interest in clumps in some other solicitor’s nominee account in the Cayman Islands, and when strangers at parties ask his solicitor if he defends criminals he tells them that he leaves that end of the market to other firms, he only deals with the commercial end where everybody’s honest.

  Crime, matrimonials, accident claims and all the bits and pieces that they call ‘litigation’ is our business. Most of it is conducted on Legal Aid, and there isn’t a politician of any party who doesn’t regard the Legal Aid fund as a legitimate target for reductions. So, as sole partner in Tyrolls, I support an assistant solicitor (who’s found time for a holiday), an articled clerk (who’s found time to be ill), a book-keeper, two secretaries and a receptionist. Not very well, as they often remind me.

  The day it all started was a hot one in late summer. I had done my stint in two Magistrates’ Courts that morning, missed lunch and now I had three people in front of me. Con Mulvaney, Jim Martin and Mohammed Afsar. Mulvaney, forties, broad built, wide-faced, fair, fresh-complexioned, thinning hair, nicotine-stained fingers, chainstore suit in lovat, trade union tie; Martin, thirties, slight, long, narrow, humorous face, ginger medium length hair, dark blazer and flannels, open-necked red shirt; Afsar, mid-twenties, lean, dark, thin moustache, good dark grey suit, white shirt, dark blue tie.

  Mulvaney introduced himself and the others as they filed in and took chairs.

  ‘It’s Mr Thayne, is it?’ he asked me. Despite the Irish name the accent was somewhere north of Belston.

  I shook my head. ‘My assistant, I’m afraid, has gone away and left you to me. I’m Chris Tyroll.’

  ‘Nothing like going straight to the top,’ observed Martin.

  ‘I don’t know if Alasdair Thayne knew what your problem is,’ I said, ‘but I’m starting fresh, so you’ll have to tell me.’

  Mulvaney nodded. ‘That’s alright,’ he said. ‘We phoned Mr Thayne because a friend recommended him, but we haven’t told him anything about it.’

  I looked at the three of them and tried to guess at a mutual interest. ‘Well, you don’t look as if the problem’s a marital one, and nobody’s injured, so it’s not an accident claim. What sort of case are we talking about?’

  ‘An employment tribunal,’ said Mulvaney, and I groaned inwardly. When the Labour Party invented Legal Aid back in the forties, they thought they’d do it in three stages, so as not to swamp the profession with a tidal wave of new work. First they brought in Legal Aid in the criminal courts; next came Legal Aid in the civil courts. The third stage was intended to be Legal Aid in the administrative tribunals, employment, welfare, health and so on. The only problem was that after the first two parts were implemented, they realised that it was costing several fortunes, so they did what politicians always do when the money frightens them — they stopped short. So, you can’t get Legal Aid for representation in a tribunal. That means you end up acting for people who’ve lost their jobs and can’t pay the bill afterwards.

  ‘You may not be aware,’ I said, ‘that Legal Aid is not available in the Employment Tribunals.’

  Mulvaney nodded. ‘I know,’ he confirmed. ‘You see, the thing is, we were going to do it ourselves; I’ve been a Shop Steward for years. I’ve seen people through tribunals and disciplinary hearings, but the word is that the firm’s taking this very seriously and pu
tting a battery of lawyers on it, so the boys thought we needed a lawyer.’

  ‘I don’t charge as much as some of the firms around here,’ I said, ‘but it’ll still cost a lot — more according to how long it runs. Is it a complicated case? Which of you has applied to the Tribunal?’

  ‘All of us,’ said Martin, and grinned. ‘We was all sacked at once.’

  ‘For the same reason?’ I asked.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Mulvaney. ‘I was sacked for calling a strike, Jim was sacked for agreeing with me, and Mohammed was sacked for walking off the job, which was what the strike was about.’

  A vague recollection stirred, a memory of headlines and TV news bulletins earlier in the summer.

  ‘You worked at BDS?’ I said. ‘You’re the people who threatened the defence of Britain, according to the Daily Telegraph? Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mulvaney. ‘Traitors, according to the Sun,’ smiled Martin.

  More memories stirred.BDS — British Defence Systems — had a big plant on the Belston ring road and another in Coventry. They used to have three more up north, but Mrs Thatcher saw to them. They’d been working to produce a new missile, the Retaliator. I’d seen it demonstrated on TV — a sleek, sea-green device that could be launched on land or sea or in the air and would hunt its target using the camera in its nose and the satellite guidance systems. It was going to be lighter and faster and pack more clout than any known missile; its guidance systems would be the most sensitive. Once it locked onto a target it could not be shaken off and was almost impossible to shoot down. Anyway, that’s what BDS said. Once our forces had it, we’d be quickest on the draw in any confrontation. Then they’d make a fortune selling it all over the world until someone who’d bought it sold it to someone who didn’t like us and our blokes would get killed by a British-made Retaliator. Then BDS would get a fat contract to make something even better, or perhaps I’m just being cynical.

  Earlier in the summer there’d been a sudden strike at BDS’s Belston works. The management said it was unjustifiable. The Union said it was not official, but it spread to the Coventry plant. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it ended. The Retaliator was undergoing trials and all was well with the world. Apart from my three clients.

  ‘So, BDS want to make an example of you. The right-wing press will be cheering them on, and you want me to stop them?’

  ‘If you would, like,’ said Martin.

  ‘I charge extra for miracles,’ I said. ‘Tell me, why won’t your Union help you?’

  Mulvaney and Martin laughed. Mohammed smiled wryly.

  ‘Because they’re in it,’ said Mulvaney. ‘They helped BDS to stop the strike. They’re thick as thieves. That’s why the boys on the shop-floor said we were to get a lawyer and they’ll pay.’

  ‘Who will?’ I asked.

  ‘The lads. At BDS. They want to see us win, so they’re holding collections each payday. We’ll find the money.’

  ‘And you were sacked for the reasons you said?’

  ‘Well, there was one other thing,’ said Martin. ‘That’s against all three of us. They say we attacked the Works Manager.’

  I groaned silently again and reached for a notepad. ‘You’d better tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Who’s first?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  It took an hour to get even the outline of their story noted, but I’d got other clients, so I made the three trade unionists another appointment and moved on. My next client was John Samson, who I’d never seen before.

  He turned out to be a stocky bloke in his late thirties, with a local accent. He was one of three partners in a small business that made harness fittings. Walsall, just up the road, is the world centre of fine leather harness. The old Hollywood cowboy stars used to have their saddles and gunbelts made in Walsall; now it’s Arab millionaires. Samson’s firm turned out the small metal fittings that go with harness.

  That sounded a deal less controversial than making the world’s nastiest weaponry, but I wondered what brought him to me.

  ‘It’s my daughter,’ he said. ‘She wanted a pony.’

  Everybody’s daughter wants a pony at some time or another and it isn’t illegal, though a lot of fathers wish it was. It turned out that Samson’s daughter and the daughter of one of his partners at work both wanted ponies. Most fathers can’t afford ponies for their daughters, so their daughters grow up a bit and transfer their frustrated equine desires to something else ungainly and toothy with long hair, bulging eyes and an uncertain temper and call it a boyfriend.

  Unluckily for Samson and his mate they could afford ponies, so they asked around their contacts in the trade and eventually they were offered two decent animals at a bargain price. They snatched at the bargain quickly. Too quickly, in fact, because they hadn’t got anywhere to keep two ponies.

  Both of them live in Kerren Wood, a village just outside Belston and, being a village, it has fields round it. One of those fields was never used, so they asked about to see if anyone knew who owned it. Nobody seemed to know, so they popped their daughters’ mounts in there and left them grazing happily. To be fair, they didn’t just take over somebody else’s field; they left a note at the local police station so that if someone came enquiring about strange ponies on his patch the police could let him know who owned the animals and that they wanted to rent his field.

  All very reasonable, and it should have worked. However, their daughters went along to the field one Sunday tea-time and there the ponies were — gone. A quick visit to the police station revealed that the owner of the field had turned up, told the police that he wasn’t interesting in letting his field and that he was seizing the ponies, which he did.

  ‘Do you know who he was?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Samson. ‘He left his particulars with the police. He’s a businessman in Brum.’

  ‘So, why do you need a lawyer?’

  ‘Well, can he do that? Can he just take our ponies, just like that?’

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘After all, it was his field and you put your ponies in it without his permission. How long had they been there?’

  ‘About six weeks.’

  ‘So, you owe him for about six weeks grazing, if nothing else, which, I suspect, gives him the right to seize your animals until his bill is paid. Have you had a bill from him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right, well, I can write to him on your behalf, asking for a bill for what’s due and repeating your offer to rent his field. Then we’ll see if he’ll be reasonable.’

  ‘He hasn’t been very bloody reasonable so far,’ complained Samson.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure we can sort this out quickly and amicably and get your daughter’s pony back.’

  I was wrong about that, but it put me in a better frame of mind to see my next client, Mrs McBride.

  Mrs McBride was very large, red-haired, and very Irish.

  Despite the sweltering afternoon she was wearing a tweed cape, and she clutched a bulging cardboard folder to her ample chest. Plonking herself into a chair opposite me, she flipped the folder open, then scrabbled in her handbag for a packet of cigarettes. Once she had one in her mouth I lit it for her.

  ‘My name’s Chris Tyroll,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you, Mrs McBride?’

  She looked up, staring intensely into my face.

  ‘You can get me justice!’ she declared in a strong Irish accent

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘My son was murdered,’ she announced, ‘that’s the problem.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  There’s something about spells of hot weather that brings the nutters flooding into solicitors’ offices. You know — the ones who are heirs to the Czar’s gold in the vaults of the Bank of England, the ones who are the rightful Queens of England, the ones who own Edinburgh Castle. They usually sit at home in their flats and their bedsitters, going through their files of news cuttings and their carrier bags f
ull of papers and in cold weather they stay by the fire, but hot weather makes them restless and they decide to do something about their delusory claims. Then there’s the ones who, as soon as the sun turns hot in the sky, start having arguments with their neighbours that turn into bitter disputes over fences and kids and tree branches and pigeon coops. I’ve grown well used to them and expect them every time there’s a heatwave, so I gritted my teeth and reached for my notebook.

  While I listened to Mrs McBride’s story the rest of the office shut down around me. At last I thought I understood her argument. I was tired and hot. My shirt was sticking to me and my tie was strangling me.

  I gave a promise to look into the matter for her, showed her out and locked the door behind her. It was too hot to walk home up the hill to Whiteway Village, so I called a cab.

  I was dropped off outside my garden gate and ambled around the side of the house. I guessed that Sheila would be on the patio at the back and, as I rounded the side of the house, I could hear her strumming a guitar and singing:

  ‘Then the miller he took all her guineas ten,

  Hey down, bow down.

  Then the miller he took all her guineas ten.

  And he pushed the fair maid in again,

  Singing I’ll be true to my true love.

  If my love will be true to me.

  Then the Crowner he came and the justice too,

  Hey down, bow down,

  Then the Crowner he came and the Justice too

  With a hue and cry and hullabaloo,

  Singing I’ll be true to my true love

  If my love will be true to me.’

  As I turned the corner onto the patio, Sheila was revealed, sprawled in a garden chair, wearing skimpy white shorts and top and clutching a guitar. Sheila is Dr Sheila

  McKenna, teacher of Social History at the University of Adelaide. About a year earlier she had come to Britain to visit her sole surviving relative, her grandfather. He had been a client of mine and was murdered on the very day that Sheila landed in England. Sorting that mess out cost both of us a lot of danger and nervous tension, in the course of which she decided she’d like to marry me, and then she disappeared back to Australia.