Quintin Jardine - Unnatural Justice

The guy was leaning over backwards to be helpful; I could see that.

"Thanks, Mr. Fallon. I'm grateful for that, and so will my wife be, when I tell her."

"My regards to your wife," he said. "I was stationed in A Division, in Glasgow, in the Lord Provost's time. I met her quite a few times at functions in the City Chambers, when she was accompanying her father."

I could almost hear him shake his head at the other end of the line.

"It was awful the way that turned out. Quite unbelievable at the time, and as far as I'm concerned it still is."

My laugh had no humour in it. "Maybe so, Superintendent, but it didn't stop it all being true."

"Aye, that's a fact as well. Still, I'm glad it's turned out all right in the end for Miss Gantry and you. She deserves it, after what she's been through. First with her father, then my late and unlamented colleague Inspector Dylan. I really do hate it, you know, when an officer goes to the other side. I take it personally, and most of my colleagues do as well. Fortunately it doesn't happen all that often, and I've certainly never known one who went as bad as he did."

I tutted my agreement, wondering how he'd react if he knew that Mike Dylan wasn't nearly as late as everyone thought.

"About Mr. Donn, sir," he continued. "We're in a position to release the body, but I'm not sure who's going to claim it. I believe you told Sergeant Kennedy that there's a sister-in-law."

"I did, but my wife and I will look after things. I'll instruct an undertaker and he'll be in contact with you."

By the time Susie got home from the office, the arrangements were well underway. Joe's remains had been moved from the mortuary to a funeral parlour in Mother well, and plans were in hand for a cremation at a place called Daldowie, in Lanarkshire, five days later, on the following Tuesday.

She kissed me when I told her, then we took Janet for a walk round the garden. We said nothing to her about Papa Joe, of course. Apart from being pointless, it's neither right nor fair to try to tell a two-year-old about death.

There were other things to be done, of course. The formality of registration had to be completed: I did that next morning in Mother well, armed with Dr. Halliday's death certificate, which I had collected from the friendly detective superintendent, and a cremation certificate signed by two other doctors. Fallon turned out to be a tall, thin man, with an even thinner moustache. I had told Susie about him, but she had no recollection of him from her City Chambers days.

"There were all sorts of people fawning about the Lord Provost back then," she'd muttered, grimly. "He'd just have been another face in the crowd."

On the spur of the moment, I asked the policeman if he had ever encountered Ricky Ross; he responded with a nod, and what I took to be a very knowing wink. "Oh aye," he said. "The famous fallen star. I hear he's rising again. As a matter of fact I was thinking of asking him if he had any openings. I can retire from this lot any time I like now."

I promised that I would put in a word for him and headed off for the Registrar's Office, and after that for Joe's lawyer. I knew nothing of that side of his life, but I had looked through his papers, in his house, before going to the police station, and found a few letters addressed to a guy named Ewan Maltbie, of a firm called Rusk, Mansell and McGregor, of whom none now figured on the practice letterhead, or, I guessed, among the human race.

I found him in a grey sandstone building near Mother well Cross. It was a lawyer's office as I had remembered them in my youth. Where Greg McPhillips' place in Glasgow is bright, airy and glassy, screaming "Top Ranking Corporate Clients' at you as loudly as it can, this was dull, dusty and modestly furnished, the way a solicitor's chambers are supposed to be. Ewan Maltbie matched his surroundings almost perfectly; he had a superior, all-knowing look about him, he was modestly dressed and there was a presence of dandruff on his shoulders like the first light snowfall of a life winter.

There was nothing dull about him, though. His eyes were as sharp as little pins and they bored into me across the desk; he never seemed to blink. He didn't smile either, nor do anything else to make me feel welcome. As I looked at him, across the deeds and documents piled high on his desk, he reminded me of my first bank manager.

Maltbie had heard about Joe's death the night before; although there was nothing in the press, word had spread through the Mother well grapevine like a flash fire through a pine forest. (I saw one of them once in Spain, from a safe distance; the flames swept through the fallen needles on the dry ground at about the same speed as a man could run.) He knew as much as I did; maybe Fallon had told him on the quiet, or maybe it had come from Dr. Halliday.

"What exactly is your relationship to my client, Mr. Blackstone?" he asked me finally.

"Don't you know?" I countered.

The wee eyes grew even sharper. "Maybe I can't answer that."

"Why couldn't you?"

"Maybe my client told me something once, but it was in confidence.

Let's say he did, but that there was no proof of what he was saying, none at all. And he certainly didn't say that he'd told anyone else.

For all I know, sir, you're on a fishing trip; if you are I'm not going to be caught." His chest puffed out as he finished, as if he was telling me that he was a big man in this town. I was reminded of a character in a script that Roscoe had sent to me a few months earlier: we'd turned it down.

I gave him what was meant to be my "Isn't this tedious' expression. "I grew up in a fishing village," I told him. "If I was trying to catch you, I would. Now let's stop the sparring. I'll answer your question, then you can answer a couple of mine. Joe Donn was a main board director of my wife's company, the Gantry Group. I'm a director too, so he and I were colleagues at that level. We also had a more personal connection. Joe was my father-in-law." Still Maltbie didn't blink.

"Your lack of reaction tells me," I continued, 'that was the thing he may or may not have mentioned to you in confidence."

"Let's say it was," the lawyer murmured. "But there remains the question of proof. I concede that Mr. Donn did tell me some time ago that he believed that he, and not Lord Provost Gantry, was the father of his former wife's child. However he told me also that her birth certificate says the opposite."

"It still does," I conceded. "But you're not quite up to speed on the issue. After Joe told Susie what he believed to be the truth, they agreed between them that they would confirm it by having DNA comparisons made." I took an envelope from my document case and handed it to him, across the mountain of documents. "That's the report; my solicitor assures me that it's all the proof a court would need. You can take a copy if you wish, to be retained on Joe's file, although not to be passed to anyone else without my wife's written permission."

Maltbie slid out the A4 sheets and read through them, carefully. When he was finished, he nodded. "I concur with your solicitor's opinion," he said. "I'm sorry Joe didn't choose to confide in me that he had done this."

"What would it have changed?"

"My reaction to your visit, for one thing. It obviates my concern that Joe's body has been released to you."

"Which reminds me," I interrupted. "Did Joe leave any specific instructions with you regarding his funeral?"

Maltbie shook his head. "No, none at all."

"That's fine, then." I told him about our provisional arrangements.

He grunted agreement. "Tell the undertaker to send me the bill. I'll meet it from the estate."

"That won't be necessary," I replied. "My wife wants to bury her father herself."