Dark Angels (26 page)

‘Hi, Brodie.’

I quickly cut him off; this was not a call I was willing to take in front of people. I excused myself, and walked outside. The corridors were filled with purposeful people living mundane lives. Porters ferrying medical specimens from wards to labs, auxiliaries in colourful uniforms wheeling tea trolleys round. It seemed as if ordinary life would be forever out of bounds now, and I couldn’t really explain why it bothered me now, because for a number of years I have been part of the underbelly of society anyway.

I found my usual escape route, the unalarmed fire door by Ward ten, and made my way out into the car park. The sun had broken through and hospital workers
were sitting on the grass enjoying a quick afternoon break. I steeled my nerves and phoned Somie.

‘I knew you’d call back–you’re a lot of things but a coward’s not one of them.’

‘Why would I not call back? Do I have something to be afraid of?’ I asked him.

‘Not me for sure–but I can’t answer for the rest of the world.’

‘You’re not angry?’

‘It was quite funny.’

‘Funny–what was funny about Prather’s man discovering you naked and tied to a chair?’

‘You’ve got to remember, Brodie, that servants have been getting members of my family out of degrading situations for centuries–it’s nothing new. You’ll have to try harder next time.’

‘Did you just call for a chat and a laugh?’ Even if he had, I was grateful for the diversion.

‘No, I didn’t.’ His voice suddenly sounded serious. ‘What have you done to piss off Uncle Roddie?’

‘Which year do you want me to start with? To cut to the chase–I suppose we could consider me throwing up on Lord MacGregor’s shoes in the Signet Library last night, followed by an equally colourful vomiting moment in your uncle’s car?’

‘Yeah, I heard about that. Still classy I see. No, unfortunately it’s not old MacGregor. It’s more serious than that.’

Anxiety nipped my stomach.

‘Brodie, I also wanted to say…I didn’t intend to harm you when we were younger and some of the
things you said really bothered me–please believe me. Back then, Brodie, I felt…I don’t know what I felt for you, but I’ve never felt it since for anyone else. Maybe we should spend a bit more time together in the Octagonal Room and see if we can’t work things out?’ There was a large spoonful of contrition in Somie’s voice, but it didn’t last long before he was back to business. ‘Have you looked inside that dodgy bag again?’ he continued, allowing no room for me to answer him. ‘I pulled Roddie up about it this morning–his attitude is, as long as you toe the line, there’s no need for you to worry.’ He was trying to convince me, and his voice was smooth and soft as I’d always remembered it.

‘I’m not prepared to be Roddie’s poodle,’ I barked back, sounding just like one. ‘And whether or not I’ve been nosing about in some posh tart’s handbag is none of your business–you saw the licence; hoping there’s more to rub my nose in, are you?’

‘There’s a lot at stake here, Brodie,’ his voice urged in compliance.

‘More than you know, Somie.’

‘I’m not a daft laddie, Brodie–I’ll keep my ears open for you. In the meantime ask your flatmate why he’s been suspended without pay from the force.’

‘I’ve got to go.’ I ended the conversation and tried to sound emotionless. The walk back to the morgue was too short to solve my dilemma. If what Somerled had said was true, Fishy had lied–he hadn’t been demoted to traffic, and if he wasn’t going to work, what was he doing with his time? By the time I reached the
entrance to Patch’s domain I had decided to support Fishy in his lie. He had stood by me for years, we had been through a lot of life’s experiences together–if he was lying, it would be for a good reason.

I opened the door and Patch started speaking immediately.

‘The photographs.’ Patch spoke in the manner of someone who had finally reached an important realisation and wanted the world to know.

‘There’s something I have to show you first,’ I said.

Patch’s mouth fell and his upper lip twitched, his moment had been stolen. My briefcase was more like a valise. I placed it on the table not bothering to push aside the academic journals or the scattered papers. Under the harsh artificial light, every crack and scuff on the worn brown leather stood out; but it was deep, and held almost as much as Mary Poppins’ bag. I took out the prize item.

‘Have you won the lottery?’ Joe whistled as I placed the Gucci handbag on the table. He was the only man present who appreciated it for what it was–probably due to having nicked a few in his time.

‘It’s not mine.’

‘Do I need to ask who it belongs to?’ Joe queried, his voice worryingly low. I shook my head.

‘I hope that’s not the bag she was carrying when she murdered that auld bloke.’ Joe’s eyes were fixed upon me. Imperceptibly to everyone else I hoped, I nodded–he caught the movement.

‘You stupid cow–have you not got enough folk to fight with without upsetting Crown Office and the
Serious Crime Squad–that’s perverting the course of justice.’ He stomped round the table to shake me by the shoulder.

‘I know that. I do know the law.’

‘You could have bloody well fooled me,’ he replied, sounding miffed more than anything else. ‘Well–why did you do it then?’ I knew he would question me unrelentingly until I gave him the answer that satisfied him. I couldn’t do that, not here, maybe not anywhere, so his exasperation with me was likely to last some time.

‘Roddie set me up. He got it to me.’

‘You could have handed it into the police saying that it had just come into your hands. Or is it important–does it have anything that will help you?’

‘It has just come into my hands! I’ve not been holding onto it for days, Joe!’ My voice protested my innocence too loudly. ‘I only got it before I came here–I haven’t looked inside it yet–I wasn’t looking forward to what I might find,’ I confessed.

‘Fuck your ethics, Brodie–of course Kailash Coutts is guilty, and if the bag contains evidence to prove that, then you’ll just have to deal with it.’ Beads of sweat had broken out along Joe’s forehead, and his left eyebrow twitched as it always did when I put him under pressure.

‘There’s no motive for murder–and the evidence supports the defence that it was an accident.’ I was in defence lawyer mode now.

‘Don’t be so bloody facetious,’ interrupted Jack Deans. ‘I know exactly what it is, and so do you–Joe’s right, it is bloody dangerous…it’s the bag that Kailash
was carrying with her on the night Lord Arbuthnot died.’

‘But I thought it was nicked?’ Fishy said.

‘It
was
stolen…and I think your friend Moses Tierney took it.’ I looked at Jack accusingly relieved that Joe’s focus had been broken.

‘Well, if Moses took it–how did it get into Roddie’s possession?’ he replied.

‘I’d love to know, but in the meantime what’s concerning me more is why Roddie sent it to me instead of handing it straight to the police?’ My eyes scanned the room looking for answers, other than the obvious one I already had.

Joe was matter of fact. ‘Oh, come on, Brodie–there’s only one reason, and you know it. Withholding evidence, attempting to pervert the course of justice–you can take your pick. If the police find out that you have that bag they’ll throw the book at you.’

‘Let’s take Roddie at face value,’ I answered. ‘Maybe there’s something in this bag that he doesn’t want the police to know about Lord Arbuthnot.’ There was something clandestine about rifling through another woman’s bag, and I didn’t like it. Some psychologists, and psychics, make a study of a woman’s personality dependant upon the contents of her bag. Kailash’s was obsessively neat and ordered. A woman who needed to be in control, the type who refused to let things go. A politically incorrect pink crocodile skin smaller purse held her make up, a tatty, locked five-year diary, and her mobile.

Grabbing the phone, Jack Deans switched it on and
rifled through the address book. Like a basset hound with a scent, he would keep going until he found whatever he thought he wanted. His heightened focus grabbed my attention. Even Fishy stopped to watch as Jack’s intuition told him he was onto something. This shrewdness was the ingredient that had once made him great, I suppose–for my sake, I hoped it would come back and stay pretty bloody sharpish.

‘Christ, I’ve got it!’ His hand tightly covered the mobile protecting his source as usual. I placed my hand over his and pulled, hard. My grip was broken by a third hand removing my fingers from Jack’s.

‘Stop your nonsense–I need you to look at this now.’

Digging his fingers into my arm, Patch pulled me across the morgue to his computer.

The others followed, and we crowded round the computer screen vying for space, jostling to see over Patch’s shoulder. As we watched him bring up the images on screen from the disc that I had found in Frank Pearson’s flat, we held our collective breath. Fire flushed through my body, as I took in the images before me. My stomach rose to meet my throat, and then I was cold through and through, chilled to the bone.

Laura Liddell lay in the top left hand corner of the photograph.

Armless and legless like a grotesque Venus de Milo. A dissection process was well under way. In the centre of the photograph stood a small boy, aged six or so, taking in every detail. His large eyes were extraordinary, already shaped by the sadistic scenes he was
witnessing, and I wondered how such a boy would turn out.

Joe was tapping the screen furiously. ‘Maggie Liddell was wrong. It’s not a girl who’s missing–it’s a boy. If he’s still around, Brodie–we have to find him.’

And I knew exactly where to look.

‘Are you going to plead?’

The Advocate Depute’s voice sounded whiny and insistent, resounding around an almost empty Parliament Hall. It was the last thing I needed to hear at this time of the morning. For the centre of the entire Scottish legal system it was depressingly deserted. Our shoes clattered up and down the diamond patterned black and white tiles. The outsized ebony fireplaces that I love so much when lit had cold empty grates. Between the two hearths stands the entrance to the Advocates Library; one swift glance told me that it too was unoccupied. The painted South Window stood twenty feet above an elaborately carved wooden stall. It was from this place that Court Macers, like middle-eastern mullahs, called the participants to attend court. It too was abandoned. It wasn’t the first time that I had been aware of the religious connotations present in this building.

Underneath the South Window you can see through to court nine, and the start of the advocates’ boxes. There was no activity there either. The stone floor was
laid centuries ago; it’s worn and uneven but it looked as if there would be no contributing wear and tear today. I was searching for signs of life, for as befits the Crown’s Prosecution, the Depute looked stern and foreboding. I needed to see others around to take away the feeling that it was not Kailash, but me, who was moving towards her doom. In the High Court of Scotland, an Advocate Depute puts on trial those accused of the most serious charges. In order to become a judge, you have to do a spell as an Advocate Depute, even if you have no background in criminal work. This was the case with Hector McVie, a senior silk, with many years’ experience behind him at the civil bar, and the man addressing me now.

The civil bar and the criminal bar are two different animals. Like oil and water they do not mix, and generally there is little love lost between them. Civil law books are dry and dusty, they contain no tales of rape, murder or incest, and civil advocates are in general like their books. That was Hector McVie’s world.

Characters who inhabit the criminal bar, in common with their clients have many vices: few of them attractive. One trait they have particularly in common is that they are hard; manners and civility have no place in their world.

Hector McVie was a gentleman. I was afraid he was going to add the word ‘please’ to his next sentence. He brought out the bully in me, and so I barked back at him.

‘No…she won’t plead…it’s too bad it was the Lord President who died.’

‘I heard you were going to cooperate.’ Hector sounded hurt, but he reminded me of my obligations.

‘Only an idiot would plead their client guilty to murder,’ I answered.

‘But you have no defence! Surely it would be idiotic to run a trial for which there is no defence?’ His ignorance of criminal work astounded me; to actually have a defence for your client’s actions is a luxury that is rarely afforded to us. We have to become masters of defending the indefensible. I bit my tongue and gave him the politically correct answer.

‘I have a defence.’

‘The Cluedo one? It was Miss Coutts in the street with a champagne glass?’ he mocked. Perhaps there was a side to Hector McVie which I hadn’t seen so far.

‘No!’ I was in barking mode again. ‘Actually, it was an accident.’

Hector stopped pacing up and down Parliament Hall and turned to look at me. Pulling his gold-rimmed, half-moon glasses down his nose, he stopped and peered. Laughter resounded gently round the Hall; he leaned against a marble plinth, his elbows nesting at the feet of Chantry’s statue of Lord President Blair. Holding his glasses in his hand, he wiped his eyes and smiled. I couldn’t look at him so I turned my attention to the magnificent statue. It was covered in cobwebs. In Parliament Hall there are a number of alcoves where, traditionally, judges sat to hear cases. These alcoves are now filled with sculptures of the great and the good, lawyers from centuries past. They all seemed to be deciding whether to have a wee laugh at my expense too.

‘You can’t be serious?’ Hector smiled indulgently at me. I liked him–as a matter of professional pride adversarial conflicts are rarely personal–but that could change.

‘I am serious. Kailash Coutts will not plead guilty to murder, no matter how much you wish this would all just go away.’

Horse-trading is part of the day to day business of court lawyers. It was obvious that Hector thought I was just waiting for a good offer.

‘What if I allowed her to plead to the lesser charge of culpable homicide?’ he asked.