Ken McClure - Eye of the raven

He decided that he would spend the evening going through it but first he would phone his daughter. He was due to visit her next Saturday on his fortnightly visit to Glenvane but he wanted to know in advance if there was anything special that she might like to do. It turned out to be swimming.

Steven had worked his way through three large gin and tonics by the time he stopped reading through the reports that McClintock had given him and leaned back in his chair to rub his eyes. Just as McClintock had said, these cases had collapsed because of challenges from the defence over forensic evidence offered by the prosecution. The three cases in question were spread over a period of eleven months and in each instance the accused had been a well-known criminal with previous convictions for the sort of offence they had been charged with. He now understood the reluctance of the Fiscal’s office to rely on evidence coming from Ronald Lee’s lab. Losing these cases must have been hugely embarrassing for them.

It must have been humiliating for Lee and the lab too, thought Steven. In fact, the only people who could possibly have been happy about the outcome were the three criminals and their respective lawyers. Steven’s jaw dropped when he read that the defence lawyer involved in all three cases was Paul Verdi of Seymour, Nicholson and Verdi, the man who had handled the David Little’s defence.

The immediate feeling that he had stumbled across something sinister was replaced after a few moments thought by the possibility he might be seeing conspiracy everywhere. It wasn’t as if Verdi had managed to get Little off too. Quite the reverse, he hadn’t mounted much of a defence at all. Suggesting to his client that an insanity plea might be his only course of action wasn’t exactly Perry Mason stuff.

The three men cited in the other cases had clearly been guilty but they had been acquitted through lab mistakes, which had been cleverly exposed by Verdi until the judicial system had had no alternative but to acquit them. The thing that troubled Steven was the fact that these three acquittals had been achieved by the same man who hadn’t even bothered to ask about the lack of corroborating evidence at David Little’s trial or indeed request an independent examination of what evidence there was.

Steven called McClintock’s mobile number.

‘ Didn’t I tell you never to call me at home?’ joked McClintock conspiratorially.

‘ I need you to tell me about Paul Verdi.’

‘ Shit, you really have a nose for sniffing out trouble,’ said McClintock. ‘Basically he’s a crooked little shit with the morals of an alley-cat, a lawyer’s lawyer, shall we say.’

‘ Not your favourite sort of people then?’ said Steven.

‘ Money-grubbing bastards the lot of them,’ growled McClintock. ‘Sometimes I think I prefer the villains. At least they’re not bloody hypocrites.’

‘ So what about Verdi?’

‘ The only good thing about Verdi is that he stopped practising a while back. Nothing but rumour and innuendo, you understand, but the word on the street was that he was asked to resign his partnership. He now pursues “business interests” in the city.’

‘ Which are?’

‘ I think they call it, “the leisure industry”. He’s behind a chain of knocking shops called, “Cuddles Executive Saunas”.’

‘ Jesus,’ said Steven.

‘ You might well need him on your side if you’re thinking of tangling with Verdi and his pals. They’re none too cuddly,’ said McClintock.

‘ Thanks for the warning,’ said Steven. ‘Do you know why he was asked to resign his partnership?’

‘ No, it was all kept very hush hush at the time, probably because these legal bastards didn’t want to shit on their own doorstep. Seymour and Nicholson is a long established firm in the city. They took on Verdi when he was young and ambitious with the idea that he should build up the criminal work for the firm. The principals are a couple of silver-haired patricians of the old school, part of the Mafia that didn’t originate in Sicily, pillars of the Edinburgh establishment who could teach Bill Gates a thing or two about networking. Verdi was a shit-kicker from the schemes who got through law school because his old lady scrubbed floors and wanted something better for her little boy.

Verdi succeeded beyond their greediest dreams because he knew where his clients were coming from. He understood them, knew how their minds worked and what motivated them. The nearest Seymour and Nicholson had ever been to violence was clapping along to the Redetsky march at a New Year’s Day concert. Verdi became the name the villains of this fair city called out whenever we came to call and he became a bit of a thorn in our side — if not a pain in our arse. He kept getting the bastards off.

‘ He was good then?’

‘ Depends on your point of view,’ replied McClintock. ‘Verdi knew damned well that his clients were as guilty as sin. Can you call defending these bastards “professionalism”? Doing your job when you know bloody well that they will go straight back on the street and do the same damned things all over again?’

‘ Know what you mean,’ agreed Steven.

Well, one thing’s for sure, Seymour and Nicholson, managed to accommodate any qualms they might have had when faced with the tide of money that Verdi was bringing in. They made him a full partner.’

‘ But something went wrong?’ Steven persisted.

‘ We did have our suspicions about Verdi when prosecution witnesses changed their mind about giving evidence on occasions but nothing was ever proved.’

‘ You thought he might be intimidating them?’

‘ Not personally and, like I say, we never managed to pin anything on him.’

‘ Maybe the mere hint of anything like that would have been enough to have Seymour and Nicholson drop him? Reputations and all that.’

‘ Maybe,’ agreed McClintock. ‘But it must have been something pretty bad to have a couple of lawyers say goodbye to a golden goose.’

‘ You do know that Verdi defended David Little?’ asked Steven.

‘ I do. Are you going to tell me this means something?’

‘ No, at the moment I’m just wondering how a man like that took the Little case,’ said Steven.

‘ What do you mean?’

‘ From what you’ve told me, Verdi was into defending big name criminals, presumably for big fees to match. Little had a mortgage and a car loan. There wasn’t even any PR in it for him. Little was public enemy number one at the time. Defending him wasn’t exactly going to be a shop window for his talents.’

‘ Good point,’ said McClintock. ‘It’s something I hadn’t thought about. I’ve no idea.’

‘ Maybe I’ll ask him,’ said Steven, noting McClintock’s reminder of how sure the case had been against Little.

‘ Remember what I said about tangling with the fun people of the “leisure industry”,’ said McClintock.

‘ I will and thanks for all your help.’

‘ Don’t know what you mean,’ said McClintock.

Steven poured himself another gin and sank back down into his chair. ‘Shit,’ he murmured as he reflected on another twist in the case. A question mark hung over Ronald Lee; a question mark hung over his lab and now a question mark hung over Little’s lawyer. He closed his eyes and wondered what to do next. It would be Friday before he got the DNA result from Susan Givens so maybe he would pay a visit to the offices of Seymour and Nicholson.

He looked up the phone book for their address and found it was in Edinburgh’s ‘new town’. This was an area of Georgian squares, streets and crescents built to the north of the castle and much favoured by the city’s professional classes. ‘Where else?’ he murmured. He wrote down the number in Abercromby Place and was about to close the book when he had second thoughts.