Da Vinci trial told of 'shell-shocked' lawyer
Court hears of day prestigious law firm was raided when police recovered stolen Da Vinci masterpiece
A top lawyer ducked out of a back door - so that he could brief colleagues about why police had raided the firm's offices looking for a painting stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch.
A trial heard on Wednesday that David Boyce, 63, looked "shell-shocked" when he met other partners of HBJ Gateley Wareing soon afterwards.
"As you can imagine, it was not a normal day at the office," said solicitor Maggie Moodie, 43, describing the event to a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Boyce is now on trial - along with two other solicitors and two Merseyside private investigators - accused of demanding more than £4 million for the safe return of a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece.
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, then insured for £15m, was snatched from the ancestral home of the Dukes of Buccleuch at Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfriesshire, in August 2003. It was found on the boardroom table of the law firm's plush offices in West Regent Street, Glasgow, by a posse of detectives on October 4 2007.
At the time, commercial litigator Ms Moodie was also the HBJ Gateley Wareing partner who dealt with complaints. Boyce was a senior partner. Ms Moodie said she was at her desk in Edinburgh when she received a phone call from the Glasgow office telling her the premises had been raided by 14 police officers and that Calum Jones, another partner, had been arrested, along with clients of the firm.
She was immediately driven through to Glasgow with the law firm's chief executive. As she and other HDJ Gateley Wareing partners talked about what was happening, they were joined by Boyce. "He explained later, in the boardroom, that he had gone out of the back door so he would be available to explain the situation," she told the court.
She continued: "He said something like 'ducked out' or 'dived out' - I am not sure what the word was - but he gave the impression he made a quick exit out of the back door. David Boyce looked shell-shocked."
He told the other lawyers he had introduced what he called "the transaction" to the firm but hadn't had much to do with it, passing the matter on to Calum Jones. "He said Calum Jones had done nothing wrong and they were acting in the repatriation of the painting." Ms Moody also told advocate depute Simon DiRollo, prosecuting, that she was "alarmed" to see a clause in an agreement which Boyce and Jones appeared to have been working on which suggested law enforcement officers would not be told about efforts to return the Leonardo da Vinci painting.
After the police raid, HBJ Gateley Wareing contacted a senior advocate to get counsel's opinion on how they should report the issue to the authorities and also the firm's PR people "to protect as far as we could the firm's good reputation." Ms Moodie said: "We were really fire-fighting at the time. It was a most unusual situation."
The trial has heard that Boyce began as an apprentice with law firm Boyds and worked his way up to become a senior partner and was heavily involved in that Glasgow firm's merger with the English-based HBJ Gateley Wareing. He was well regarded by fellow professionals and clients in his field of commercial property law, said defence QC David Burns.
On trial are solicitor Marshall Ronald, 53, of Skelmersdale; Robert Graham, 57 and John Doyle, 61, both of Lancashire; solicitor Calum Jones, 45, of Renfrewshire, and solicitor David Boyce, 63, of Airdrie. They deny conspiring to extort £4.25m or, alternatively, attempting to extort the money. A second charge, which they also deny, alleges that the five accused attempted to defeat the ends of justice by getting one of the undercover officers to sign an agreement that police would not be told about what was happening.
The trial continues.
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