Mistress of the Game

chapter Nine

HE WAS THE MOST FAMOUS BARRISTER IN LONDON.

As he strode down the Strand toward the Old Bailey, the city's venerable criminal court, immaculate in his Savile Row suit and polished, handmade brogues, people stared.

You know who that is, don't you? That's Gabriel McGregor. Hasn't lost a case in six years at the bar. He's a genius.

A blond-haired, gray-eyed beauty, Gabe McGregor was built like a rugby prop-forward, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested and with legs as long and strong and straight as oak trees. There was a solidity about him, a strength, in his body, his jaw, his steady, direct gaze that made juries think: I believe this man. Underlying his physical strength was a powerful intellect. Gabriel McGregor could judge a case's nuances in a matter of moments. He knew instinctively when to push a witness and when to hold back. When to bully, to flatter, to cajole, to frighten, to befriend. Every judge at the Bailey knew and respected him. Gabriel McGregor was a class act.

Glancing at his watch, he quickened his pace. It wouldn't do to be late to court. His long stride seemed to swallow up the yards of sidewalk effortlessly, like a whale gulping down krill. He was a colossus, a giant among men.

"Gabe, thank God. I thought you'd done a runner."

Michael Wilmott was a solicitor. Every time Gabe saw him, the same three words popped into his head. Weak. Pathetic. Disappointed. Michael Wilmott was overweight, overworked and overwhelmed. He wore a cheap, shiny suit with sweat patches under the arms and a permanently harassed expression. If there were such a thing as a legal A-team, Michael Wilmott was not on it, had never been on it, could never be on it.

"I wouldn't do that, Michael." Gabe spoke in a soft Scottish brogue. "I told you I'd be here. I never break my word."

"No. You just break innocent householders' skulls in six different places."

The words were like a glass of ice-cold water in Gabe's face. Reluctantly he stepped out of his fantasy world and back into reality.

This wasn't the Old Bailey. It was Waltham Forest Magistrates' Court.

He wasn't a hotshot lawyer. He was a nineteen-year-old drug addict, accused of burglary, assault and grievous bodily harm with intent to kill.

Michael Wilmott was all that stood between him and twenty-five years in Wormwood Scrubs Prison.

"The magistrates don't want to hear your heroic speeches, and nor do I. Keep your head down, let me do the talking and try to look like you're sorry. All right?"

Gabe nodded meekly. "Yes, sir."

Gabriel McGregor was born in the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland in 1973. The only son of Stuart McGregor, an impoverished dockworker, and Anne, Stuart's childhood sweetheart, Gabe was a strong, handsome baby who grew into a strong, handsome boy.

Gabe couldn't remember the first time he'd heard the name Jamie McGregor. All he knew was that he had only ever heard it uttered with venom and hatred. He heard the name so often, it seemed as much a part of his childhood as the smell of ship oil, the scratchy feeling of cheap polyester clothes against his skin, and the ominous thud of the bailiff's fist on the front door of the family's run-down, tenement flat.

Jamie McGregor was the source of all their troubles.

It was Jamie McGregor's fault that they lived their lives hand-to-mouth, in crushing, soul-destroying poverty.

Jamie McGregor made Gabe's father drink and hit his mother.

Jamie McGregor made his mother cry as she tried to cover the bruises with cheap foundation from Boots.

Jamie McGregor...

Not until he was a teenager did Gabe piece together the truth. Jamie McGregor, the famous entrepreneur who had founded Kruger-Brent and become one of the richest men in the world, was his great-great-uncle. Jamie McGregor had had two brothers, Ian and Jed, and a sister, Mary. Ian McGregor, the eldest brother, was Gabe's great-grandfather. Ian's son, Hamish, was Gabe's grandfather. Hamish's son, Stuart, was Gabe's dad.

The rot had started with Jamie's brother, Ian, back in the early 1900s. Ian McGregor never forgave his younger brother for running off to South Africa and making a fortune.

"Who does he think he is, disappearing halfway 'round the world, leaving us to take care of Mam and Da and the farm? Sending nae money home to those as raised him?"

Ian had conveniently forgotten that he had laughed in Jamie's face when he announced his intention to sail for the diamond fields of Africa. That growing up he had beaten the boy mercilessly, frequently cheating him out of his scant share of food and giving him the toughest, most arduous jobs on the family's meager, rocky, little farm north of Aberdeen. By the time Jamie founded Kruger-Brent and made his millions, both his parents were dead, condemned to early graves by the relentless poverty of lives spent tilling the land. Jamie did send money home, to Mary, the only one of his siblings who had loved and supported him. But when she, too, died, of tuberculosis, aged only thirty, the payments dried up. Jamie had not seen or spoken to either of his brothers in over a decade. He did not feel he owed them anything.

Ian McGregor saw things differently. If he'd been tough on Jamie, it was only for his own good. He had loved the boy like a father, worked hard to provide for him, and what had been his reward? Abandonment. Betrayal. Destitution.

Ian began to drink heavily. As Jamie's fortune and reputation grew, so, too, did his brother's bitterness and envy. The years passed, and Ian passed this loathing on to his own son, Hamish, who in turn bequeathed it to Gabe's father, Stuart, like some sort of terrible genetic disease.

When Gabe was growing up, just to speak the name Jamie McGregor was to invoke the devil. Over the years, other names were added to the family's roll call of hatred. Kate Blackwell. Tony Blackwell. Eve Blackwell. Robert Templeton. Gabe's grandfather, Hamish, devoted his retirement years and every penny of his meager savings to a doomed lawsuit against the mighty Kruger-Brent corporation. Time after time the case was thrown out of courts from Glasgow to London to New York. Each time the judges were more scathing.

Frivolous.

Greedy.

Entirely without foundation.

Hamish McGregor died a bankrupt, bitter man. Twenty years later, the same fate befell his son, Gabe's father. Gabe was sixteen when his dad died, his mind corroded with drink and hatred, his body broken from the long, backbreaking years on the docks.

Despite everything, Gabe had loved his dad. He tried to remember the good times they'd had together. Playing on the beach at Elgin when he was three or four. Watching Celtic play at Parkhead, screaming their heads off in the terraces. Dancing around the tree at Christmas, all three of them in the front room, Mam, too, before Dad had started to hit her, before the bitterness got too much.

Two weeks after his father died, Gabe left home.

His mother was worried.

"Where will you go, son? You've nae qualifications. You'll nae find work in Aberdeen, nae now the shipyards are gone."

"I'm not staying in Scotland, Mam. There's work down south. Plenty."

"You mean London?"

Anne McGregor couldn't have sounded more horrified if Gabe had said he was moving to Beirut.

"I'll phone you as soon as I'm settled. Do not worry, Mam. I can take care of myself."