Dark Angels (13 page)

‘You’ve got to float above the pain, and keep your wits about you.’

She paused for a moment her eyes lingering on my face.

‘You’re in danger, girl.’

‘And you’re not?’ I retorted.

‘No, I’m in trouble. There’s a difference. A big difference.’

Looking at me as if I were a silly child she continued. ‘The worst case scenario is that I get life in prison. In Scotland that’s nothing. I’d be out in ten.’

‘What makes you think I’m in more danger than you?’

My voice sounded unconvinced. Kailash moved in to make her point.

‘There has been no threat to my life. Recently.’

She had a point, but if Kailash wasn’t behind the attack on me, then it was logical to assume that whoever was, was hurting me to get at her. As I silently considered my options, I was unguarded. At a glance Kailash understood my reasoning.

‘Stop chewing your lips and listen to me.’

Her harsh tone grabbed my attention. Suddenly aware that I was biting down hard on my lower lip, I stopped and looked at her.

‘I don’t mean to be callous, Brodie, but if a hit man wiped you out, I could easily get another defence lawyer.’

As a salve to my ego she then added:

‘Not one as good or as trustworthy, of course.’

Kailash sounded as if she meant it, but then she always did. For my part I felt a twinge of guilt cross my conscience at her words. It was true–removing me would not necessarily harm Kailash. But if that were the case they could have disposed of me at Dunsappie Loch. The caller had told Fishy it was a warning. Usually when people receive a cautionary thumping they are told what action they must take to avoid further beatings. That had not happened, which meant anything I did at the moment could incur their wrath.

Kailash reached inside her embroidered salwar, and pulled out a battered recorded delivery envelope. Even before she handed it to me, I could see that it was well thumbed. It looked old but the postmark was dated only the week before Lord Arbuthnot’s death.

‘I need you to see this, Brodie. I must warn you the contents of the envelope may shock you–to be truthful when I received it, when it was sent to me, I was confounded.’

Why would I be shocked, and Kailash merely perplexed? I was not a novice in the seamier side of life, and her condescension was irksome. Reaching into the envelope, I was aware of Kailash’s scrutiny. I deliberately took my time, enjoying her unease. I could feel that it was a photograph. I pulled it out but it had been folded in two.

Pausing before I unfolded it, Kailash reached out and touched my hand–now
I
felt uneasy. Involuntarily,
the muscles in my throat tightened making it hard to breathe.

I spread the paper out on the table before me.

Staring back at me, a computer generated picture.

My own face superimposed on the body of a dead, uniformed schoolgirl.

Revulsion travelled through my fingertips to the rest of my body. The girl was ritualistically posed, almost as a crucified corpse. She was young–she would have been young. Her skirt was pushed up and she wore no underwear, her legs were splayed open–and my face was on top of that grotesque image.

‘I would never have shown it to you if you hadn’t been attacked.’

Kailash did not seek to reassure me. Her world was a place where such threats were taken seriously. She was personally aware of what human beings could do to one another. I sought to comfort myself.

‘It could just be a sick joke,’ I said, my voice sounding feeble.

‘Try telling that to the girl whose body it is, Brodie. This is a corpse, a corpse with your face over it.

‘It looks violently ritualistic to me. Unlike the recent attack on you–so that was either a warning as claimed…or something to whet their appetite.’

Kailash waited for me to say something. As unsavoury as it sounded, what I had gone through was merely a canapé, a starter. Bile rose in my throat at the thought of some sick bastard getting sexually excited by my pain.

I felt vulnerable again but that would only stimulate his appetite. I had to pull myself together.

‘Any theories?’ Kailash asked

‘I’m guessing it’s a man. Nearly all sexual violence seems to emanate from the Y chromosome, doesn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily, you could have a killing team. Dominant male, submissive female, because that’s what it usually takes to get a malleable young female involved in extremely violent behaviour. Ask yourself, Brodie–why would this young girl have allowed herself to be taken to her death? Wouldn’t she have needed to trust someone? And aren’t we all encouraged to believe that all women have the nurturing instinct? That they are all, by nature, safer than men. Brady needed Hindley; Fred West needed Rose West; Ian Huntley was trusted because of his relationship with Maxine Carr.’

If Kailash had agreed that it was likely to be a man, then it meant that I could at least have felt safe with half the world’s population. Now, things were changed psychosocially, everyone was a suspect.

‘Hey…’

I realised Kailash was talking to me.

Her eyes were curious. ‘Brodie, are you all right?’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t hear what you were saying.’

I just wanted to get out of there. I needed to get back to some sort of normality. I stood up and said goodbye, inadvertently leaving the photograph behind on the table. Kailash stood up and handed it to me.

‘This is yours.’

Like a poisoned chalice, I would love to have handed it on. I knew Kailash was better able to deal with such matters, and I did not relish the learning curve I would have to go through to survive all of this.

I briefly shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead.

‘We’ve touched the photograph with our bare hands, meaning our prints will be on it, but maybe the killer’s will be too?’

Kailash shook her head.

‘I ran it past a friend, nobody else’s were.’

I like a world where my survival is limited to books, exams, and bad tempered judges. This didn’t feel like my world–and I never wanted it to be.

I got Jack Deans to drop me off in George Street when we came back from Cornton Vale. I’d spent most of the journey in silence again, not because Jack had annoyed me, but through sheer physical exhaustion. I may have been out cold for three days, but I didn’t feel anywhere near rested. Every part of me ached, and the visit to Kailash had taken more out of me than I was willing to admit. Willing to admit to most people, that is. I needed Lizzie.

I jumped out of the car at Whistles before an Enforcer could slap a ticket on us, and walked a few yards to the coffee kiosk nearby at the edge of the pavement. It was Jack’s favourite outlet in the city, but that status wasn’t due to the quality of the hot drinks. Lizzie Collins was renowned more for her ability to turn any man to slush than for her barista skills. Gorgeous, petite, blonde and manipulative, it would be easy to hate her–I preferred her as one of my best friends than a mortal enemy. Life wasn’t good if Lizzie got you in her sights for some perceived slight or misdemeanour.

As soon as the occupant of the tiny kiosk turned round to face me, my heart sank. She wasn’t there.

‘Hi, Brodie,’ said the dreadlocked and lanky streak of piss behind the counter. ‘Looking for Lizzie?’

I nodded–there were lots of people in this city looking for Lizzie, but at least my intentions were honourable. I just wanted a shoulder to cry on and someone to share eating with–most of Lizzie’s seekers were after something a bit more carnal, even if they suspected they’d never experience it.

I grabbed the proffered cappuccino from Gregor (and said I’d tell his dad he was OK next time we both met at work; most of Edinburgh’s dodgy looking characters were generally likely to come from affluent, middle-class backgrounds, and most of them had at least one member of the legal profession in their genetic make-up), and headed along George Street.

It was always hard to keep track of Lizzie’s movements. I knew that she’d been in Milan for a week or so–the result of her latest dalliance. I also knew that she’d come back loaded with handbags and shoes, but her travel-mate would still be carrying the same number of condoms that he’d left with. Lizzie would almost put Kailash to shame with her ability to play men. We’d been friends since university, the only difference being that Lizzie had attended lectures for three weeks before deciding it wasn’t for her. The student life, however, was most definitely her thing, and she acted her way through four years of a degree without being found out. After her ‘graduation’, she had most of the skills in place to have transformed
herself from working-class nothing into darling of the world.

Lizzie had always meant a lot to me. We both came from nothing, but while I admitted that my background often pushed me in a very negative way, Lizzie only saw hers as an audition. She wasn’t what birth had made her, she was what she had decided to be. No one would have guessed that the beautiful, fragile creature who swam from one admirer to the next had started life in a Wester Hailes drug den and had only started to blossom after being fostered by a succession of well-meaning but, ultimately incapable, families. Lizzie would learn what she needed to from each then move on. She hadn’t moved on from me yet, and I hoped she never would. I wanted to go over what had been going on but it would have to wait–I should have guessed she wasn’t back as she would have taken over in place of everyone else at my sick bed given half a chance.

Walking more quickly than my aching legs wanted to, I headed towards my next choice. People who drank were going to hell in a hand basket according to my teetotal mother. Right now, I didn’t give a damn.

‘Double Glenmorangie, please,’ I shouted. The young barmaid eyed me suspiciously, hesitating before supplying my order, as if she was thinking of redirecting me to some more appropriate hostelry. She was new there. Although the Rag Doll bar on the corner of Coburg Street was virtually deserted, the regulars interrupted their game of pool and nodded almost imperceptibly, acknowledging my presence.

It was a hard pub, the type of place it wasn’t always
entirely safe for a stranger to wander into, but I wasn’t a stranger. Each time I came here, I felt as if I had come home. The Proclaimers were singing ‘Sunshine on Leith’, and I felt safe. I also knew exactly who I was looking for, and as my eyes skimmed around the room, I didn’t see him.

‘Three pounds, please.’

Snatching the amber liquor, I almost threw the money over the bar.

‘Your money’s no good here.’

His voice was deep and rough, as if trawled from the North Sea. An arm the size of a leg encircled my waist pulling me to him; I surrendered, and took refuge in his chest.

‘Long time no see, honey…’

Pointing to the glass, his voice sounded disapproving–especially for a pub landlord: ‘Have you got some kind of problem with whisky now?’

He pushed me away, his eyes taking in every detail of my appearance, fingering my Armani suit with the light touch of a connoisseur.

‘The clothes are fine, but give me the name of the bastard that did this to you.’

His voice cracked as his hand gently pushed back my curls and stroked my bruised cheek. Sitting down on a bar stool, he put both arms around me and pulled me towards his chest again. I could hear his heart beat, strong, and steady. We stayed like that for some time, with him patting my back in consolation.

In that moment, I could almost feel sorry for the shit, or shits, who had assaulted me.

When stirred, Glasgow Joe is a hound from hell. But he was my hound from hell. I had come to the only person in the world who I knew could protect me against whoever had ordered the attack. Joe is my friend, but more importantly right now, he is an assassin.

Six feet six in his stinking stockinged feet, he likes to wear a kilt during the Edinburgh Festival. None of the women who flock to him during those three weeks have any idea what they’re really getting as they fall for the vision of Viagra on legs walking down George Street.

Joe and I had met on the first day at St Mary’s Sweet Star of the Sea Primary School. Newly arrived from Glasgow, his thick accent would ordinarily have made him an automatic punching bag, but even then his size kept the bullies at bay.

Joe said I was “Clyde built”. The shipyards on the River Clyde made the finest ships in the world, but the only boat I resembled was a tug. No threat to anyone, I was hounded from the start.

‘Are you a green grape or orange juice?’ shouted the boys from the Protestant school.

Was I a Catholic or a Protestant? I hesitated, finally recognising that my green blazer was a giveaway.

‘What’s it to you–you radge?’

Joe walked up to the gang, his red hair glittering in the sun, and whispered it in the leader’s face before butting him on the forehead. Scattering, like coins thrown at a wedding, the boys disappeared in the direction of the Water of Leith.

That incident took place twenty years before, not half a mile away from where we stood today. Both outsiders, we clung together from that moment on. I had as much faith in him now as I did then.

‘Tell me about it, darlin’.’

He led me away from the bar, across the bare floorboards to a bench seat covered in ripped, red leatherette. I leaned on the Formica table nursing my drink. The Rag Doll in itself was not a big money spinner, but it was a convenient front for Glasgow Joe.

At the age of nineteen, he had run away from police questioning. Joe always said he had two options: the French foreign legion (‘Rubbish for my lovely Celtic complexion, all that sun and sand’–He was the opposite of me. I don’t have the usual redhead’s complexion, my skin loves the sun and tans easily) or America (‘I always wanted to be a cowboy, doll’). An easy choice.

Joe never did talk much about his time abroad. At one point, I had visited him in the States, but, even then, he managed to hide most of his life from me. It had brought consequences that neither of us wanted to address even to this day. All I knew was that, while there, he had honed the skills I was about to rely upon. Evidently whatever he had been up to was profitable–he had plenty of money in his pocket, and a declaration that he never wanted to see the back of Leith again.