Dark Angels (16 page)

After rubbing the skin rejuvenating cream into my legs, I slipped my feet into the clean cashmere socks provided. It was like being in a health spa, not the back room of one of the scummiest pubs in the city. Recalling Malcolm’s admonitions. I rubbed the black birch oil which Malcolm had given me into my wounds, conditioner into my hair, and shaved my legs. I may not be Kailash’s ‘girl’, but my appearance and health could do with a bit of a helping hand just now. I wasn’t going to willingly put leeches on myself–not all of Malcolm’s advice was quite so easy to take. Struggling into the spare jeans and t-shirt that I always left there, I wondered about Joe’s private life. Did he ever bring anyone back here? And, if he did, what did they think about the signs of me that littered the place?

Joe came in just as I finished.

‘I phoned Maggie–she’s expecting us.’

He handed me two filled rolls, and headed for the
door. Evidently, we would eat our breakfast on the hoof. We took our time to walk the short distance from the pub to the flats and by the time we got there, I was on my second roll. I didn’t want to risk my mouth being filled with the smell of piss if we used the lift, so we started the climb to the nineteenth floor. I tried to ignore the graffiti, which had always been there, but the place had definitely deteriorated in the last ten years.

Joe rang the doorbell, and I could hear Maggie Liddell shuffling inside. It took some time before the door was opened and a morbidly obese woman peered out. Her life had been hard, and her commitment to food was understandable. She had given birth to six children, and only one of them was not HIV positive. Maggie was a good woman who had done her best as heroin swept through Leith like wildfire.

‘My God, son,’ she shrieked at Joe, ‘you’re making an old woman very happy–you look good enough to eat.’

Maggie clasped him to her enormous bosom–it might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw him quake. He was probably regretting wearing his kilt by now. I barely received a nod. It was generally perceived by the red Leithers where I had been raised that I had sold out and forgotten my roots. I’d certainly tried to–yet now that I was in trouble, it was the first place that I had come running.

It was like stepping back in time, from the orange swirly carpet to the copy of Gainsborough’s
Blue Boy
that hung above the gas fire. The fire was on full blast, and the room was stiflingly hot. Maggie’s chair was
placed next to it. I could see that her legs were badly mottled with fireside tartan.

‘So, son–you’re here about Laura. Do you have news for me? Is she safe?’ Maggie Liddell knew the truth, but Joe had told me that for years she had fooled herself that Laura was in London, alive and well.

Glasgow Joe shook his head and Maggie began to cry; long, heart rending sobs as she rocked back and forth letting her grief pour out.

‘Aw, son, I can hardly believe it. That wee lassie. That wee bairn. I should have saved her–I knew she was in trouble. I went to the polis, I honestly did, but they didn’t believe me–respectability counts for a lot.’ She spat out the word ‘respectability’ as if it had nothing to do with morality or decency.

‘You told them she was missing?’ asked Joe.

‘Oh aye, was at their door every day. Laura was my youngest grandchild–and after the bother I had with my six…I was already looking after three grandchildren and with my diabetes and my arthritis–I couldn’t take another one. I knew she was in trouble, and I thought that the polis would come through for her.’

I had heard that Maggie had taken some of her children to court to assume parental rights of her grandchildren. An ardent activist, she had mobilised a group of grandparents in the area to assume responsibility for the offspring of their wayward, HIV positive children.

‘What do you mean she was in trouble?’ I asked.

Maggie did not lift her head to look at me. Her hands covered her face and the folds of flesh on her arms wobbled as she continued to rock back and forth.

‘Laura was in care, son,’ she answered, as if Joe had asked the question, not the wee upstart she was ignoring. ‘That’s never a pretty picture, but that wee lassie went through a lot.

‘Whilst she was in the custody of the council…I think she was interfered with. Some dirty bastard taking advantage of kids with nothing left anyway. I’d rip their bollocks off and hang them up to dry, so I would.’

Maggie stopped to catch her breath and blew her nose with ferocity. Composing herself she began again. I had more questions, and as long as she was answering them, I didn’t mind if she channelled it through Joe.

‘Interfered with in what way? Was she abused? Raped?’

Maggie stared resolutely at Joe.

‘I used to bring her home for weekend visits when I could. She was always such a lovely lassie, but she changed after being in that home for a while. There was nae chance of her getting fostered–snotty weans fae druggies on schemes never seem to attract yer Hollywood stars looking for a cute wee bairn to take into their lives.

‘She eventually said when it was just me and her one day–the other ones were away up the Walk to pinch fruit fae the Paki shops…’ Maggie’s words came out naturally. Children shoplifting, local shopkeepers being the butt of racism, it was all as easy to her as going to the bingo and dodging the loan sharks on the estate.

‘We were sat here watching the telly when she said
it,’ Maggie’s eyes watered at the thought of what her granddaughter had revealed.

‘When I say, interfered with–I don’t mean once or twice–she told me she was hired, loaned, to high heid yins. When I went to the polis–they’d have none of it.’

Glasgow Joe and I listened in silence as she spoke. We had already agreed that we would not show her the photographs; there is only so much the human mind can bear.

‘So I decided to deal with it myself. I didn’t take her back that Monday morning, no’ right away. I took Laura to the doctor and had her examined–she agreed, said that she had been interfered with. I think she went to the polis as well, she must have done, because they came banging to the flat as soon as I got back, accusing my son who’d been staying here at the time. That meant every access visit from Laura had to be supervised by the social–word got out…’ Maggie turned to Joe and nodded at him for confirmation.

‘That my son was a “beast” for assaulting Laura–he was hammered in the lift and just left.’

Joe nodded at her, supporting her; reaching out he held her hand, gratefully she squeezed it.

‘Davy, my son, couldn’t take it…he would never have harmed her. He had full blown AIDS by that time and it wasn’t even safe for him to come home. I couldn’t even let my laddie die in peace…’

Tears ran freely over the red broken veins on Maggie’s cheeks; pushing, she lifted her great bulk from the chair, and hobbled to the kitchen. The arches in her feet had fallen as a result of her weight; she moved slowly and
with difficulty, dragging her tartan slippers across the threadbare carpet.

I could hear the kettle being switched on, and Glasgow Joe went through to the tiny kitchen to help Maggie. There was no room left in there for me and I wouldn’t have been wanted anyway. I stood by the balcony window whilst I waited for my cup of tea. The one redeeming feature of our flat had been the view. On a clear day I could see straight across the docks to Fife. The Firth of Forth was mesmerising in any weather. I loved to watch the ships come in and out. If I had lived on Maggie’s side of the building, perhaps I would have turned out like Shirley. It’s hard to visualise a better life if all you see is concrete.

‘Maggie was telling me the last time she saw Laura alive, was the 23
^rd
September 1990, just before her fifteenth birthday.’

Joe was carrying a huge tray laden down with Tunnocks teacakes and caramel wafers. My heart sank as I knew we would have to eat our way through a considerable number of them to avoid offending Maggie even further.

Joe spoke loudly, so that our hostess could hear.

‘Maggie asked around after Laura told her what had happened. She used some of the people she knew through the grandparents’ groups, and some of the addicts that her kids were friendly with. Maggie reckons there’s a ring of men–and they’ve been grooming children round here for years. There’s also a rumour on the street that one girl escaped–and that she has evidence that could send them all away.’

Maggie stopped her sobbing to interrupt him.

‘And I thought that girl was my bonnie wee Laura–I kept expecting her to walk in and we could put those bastards behind bars where they belong.’

Maggie had reached her chair now and she manoeuvred herself into it like an oil tanker docking. Her knobbly hand tapped my knee forcefully, to gain my full attention or to beat me into submission.

‘I’m talking to you, lassie. Maybe I’m no’ playing with a full deck now–but that girl exists…’

Maggie’s rheumy eyes stared into mine, they still shone with unshed tears.

‘I deliberately fooled myself that it was Laura–but you can’t blame a granny for hoping, can you? Especially when there’s no’ much to hold onto.’

I placed my hand over hers, and promised that we would find the vanished girl, but I didn’t tell her what I really thought. The truth was, if the mystery girl was still alive, she wasn’t missing–she was in hiding.

My stomach was aching from all the teacakes and caramel wafers I’d polished off, and we again decided to take the steps rather than the lift. Our route was empty and it gave me a chance to think what to do next. I switched on my mobile to check for messages–there were several irate texts from Roddie Buchanan but I didn’t want to meet him yet. My cases were being covered, Lavender had seen to that, when Joe had initially phoned her to say what was going on, so I could tell myself that there was no need to call him back.

The sound of our feet echoed through every storey, and my hip was beginning to hurt–maybe I should have waited before I went out running.

‘Do you think that girl really exists?’ Glasgow Joe asked.

‘I want to believe…but she could be an urban myth. There are plenty of them round here.’

I understood Maggie’s self-deception, and bought into it to some extent. I needed to trust in this girl’s
existence because my own life might depend upon her.

‘Maggie’s theory about the paedophile ring didn’t sound right though, Brodie–there have only been four deaths over the years.’

‘Maybe there’s something unusual about those girls–something I have in common with them,’ I ventured. ‘Why would it go from them, their killings, to me? It can’t be random, that’s not how killers like this usually work. From what I know of the cases, there are certain things this killer needs to do, there are things that he–or she–do to get their way of working all over the murder, so there needs to be something that makes me next in line. What is it, Joe? What am I missing?’

Joe ignored my last comment; we all see, and hear, what we want to.

‘But Maggie said they had already tried to report the men to the authorities–so the children were no threat to the ring, they knew that even if they did disclose, nothing was going to happen, the police weren’t going to do anything.’

‘Yes, but those girls jeopardised the security of the abusers, even if it came to nothing–perhaps they view me as a threat too?’

‘How could you be a threat to them? You know nothing.’ Joe was stating the obvious, again. But he was wrong, I did know something–and that was that I did not want to die. I was perplexed. I wanted a quick solution but I just couldn’t see things clearly. Pinning my hopes on Fishy, I waited on him to phone, which he did as soon as we were out of the flats.

‘Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick–I’ve been phoning all morning.’ He rattled on, his voice high and laced with anxiety. Highly-strung, I could hear him unwrapping his antacid tablets and felt guilty for upsetting his ulcer.

‘I’ve got to give evidence in Edinburgh Sheriff court this afternoon–meet me in Chambers Street Museum before that,’ he demanded.

Joe and I headed away from Leith, back to his lockup. We needed transport, and he had a collection of possibilities that would make an aficionado drool.

Glasgow Joe has probably lost count of the motorbikes he owns. Awesome was his present to me on my twenty-first birthday, and remains the best gift I’ve ever received. He disapproved of the name I had chosen–but I was still tickled by how many teenage boys got hard-ons just looking at my bike, all of them mouthing ‘Awesome’ as they considered riding nothing trickier than a mini-scooter themselves.

I thought I should be keeping a low profile, so I was surprised when he took the keys to his customized trike, a bespoke three-wheeled bike, hand built in Texas, with a chopper front and two seats at the back. The petrol tank was crafted into the shape of a coffin, practically impossible to get petrol into, but the practicalities weren’t what had attracted Joe to his toy.

The paint job on the trike would outshine a Ferrari, and probably cost as much. Even the seats are specially made black leather, with a hand-stitched embossed skull. Joe had decided we were going cruising. The point about a normal motorbike is that wearing a helmet
affords you a certain amount of anonymity–on a trike you don’t wear a helmet, but you can give up all hope of not being noticed anyway.

I knew Glasgow Joe had a plan; he just hadn’t bothered to tell me. Reluctantly I climbed on board, but not before he had handed me a jacket. I took one look at it, and protested loudly. ‘Bad Ass Girl’ was written in shocking pink gothic script between the shoulder blades. ‘Christ, Joe–did you get me this specially or do you keep it just in case you want to impress
really
classy women?’

The roar of the engine announced our arrival two blocks away. We drove up Ferry Road, the early afternoon shoppers assuming we were a Festival act and waving us along. Joe was heading for Muirhouse and Pilton, some of the most deprived housing estates in Edinburgh, but he didn’t finish there.

By the time we made our way up town and finally parked in Chambers Street we had visited the Edinburgh that is strictly off limits to tourists. For a reason. Glasgow Joe was showing anyone who might be interested that I was under his protection now.