Dark Angels (36 page)

I told Moses exactly how I would protect him. What I would do to help him adjust in the future, and why those bastards that hurt him and the girls were going down. The trouble was, he was ten miles down the road by the time I thought of words adequate enough to express my opinions.

As I watched the Panda car driving off, guilt ripped my heart to shreds. It was too early to go to Cornton Vale, and I couldn’t face Joe round the breakfast table. When I have bad feelings, I try my damnedest to ignore them. This was one of those times. Fast driving, hard liquor and sweet food are the best panacea. Even if it hadn’t been dawn I had work to do so I headed off to do it–and get a couple of Mars bars along the way.

Tempus fugit. Well, it might for some people at some times, but it didn’t for me that morning.

I sat on the hard kerbstone beside Awesome waiting for ten o’clock so that I could be allowed into Cornton Vale. A probationary prison officer eyed me suspiciously as I thumped down my scraped bike helmet on the counter.

‘Agent visit,’ I answered the unspoken query in her eyes.

‘What firm?’ Disbelief rang soundly in her voice.

I looked around for someone I knew, an old hand was coming on duty.

‘How’s the bike running, Mike?’

‘Sound as a pound, Brodie.’

He nodded to the new officer and the agent signing-in book was passed through the grille.

‘Kailash Coutts. She’s on remand–she should be in D Hall. Mike, can you bring Kailash out for an agent visit?’

The echo of heavy doors being unlocked resounded
through the prison walls. I sat in the agent’s room, and waited.

Her scent preceded her. Prisons generally stink. Male prisoners are worse than female, and the strange thing is, it’s not because they are dirty. An odour of hopelessness emanates from their skin. It’s horrible, but Kailash was different.

In spite of the debacle that was the first day of her murder trial she floated in, her emotions hidden behind a mask of exquisite grooming.

‘You came.’

It was a statement, not a question, almost as if she expected me to abandon her, and resign from acting before the court on Monday morning. Perhaps I would have done if my own options were not so limited.

‘You don’t expect much of me,’ I replied.

‘I knew what I was getting before I asked for you that first time.’

That could have been taken as a compliment, but I decided not to press her on it. As I pulled the cheap wooden chair away from the table, its legs scraped along the floor, making a screeching noise that set my nerve endings tingling. I took her file out of my bag, and placing a pen in my mouth, tried to think of a way to start to broach all that I had to say.

‘Take that pen out of your mouth–you look like an imbecile. I hope that’s not a habit you’ve got,’ she chided me.

I placed the pen, dripping with saliva onto the table. It was a bad habit of mine but no one except Mary McLennan ever told me off for it. Miffed, I decided to
spit it all out, starting with the court case. Kailash might have known what she was getting when she asked for me but I had no idea. I still wasn’t sure what I was dealing with.

‘The evidence against you yesterday was pretty damning,’ I began.

‘He’s a lying bastard,’ she replied.

‘So what? No one’s going to believe that Roddie was double-dealing. You set him up. Everyone thinks he pays for ball torture. Why for God’s sake did you do it?’

I had never fully bought into the idea that Kailash used the photographs as a marketing tool. If the rumours were true she was richer than Croesus and didn’t need to resort to cheap stunts.

‘Roddie might not be into the “white room” scene–but he’s into pretty much everything else. Stuff that I don’t approve of.’

I almost choked. ‘What could be so bad that you don’t approve of it?’

‘My motives don’t matter at the moment. I deemed it necessary that Roddie be brought down a peg or two–they needed to be shown that I could get to any one of them if I chose.’

Sullenly, I stared at her as she continued.

‘Roddie was drinking red wine. He didn’t know who I was. I slipped Rohypnol into his drink–it was simple; the red wine camouflaged the blue dye that’s supposed to act as a safety device. In a few seconds he was unconscious.’

‘And then you could do what you wanted?’ I shook my head, remembering I had heard similar words and
how they had come from me talking about my own situation.

‘I don’t apologise for my lifestyle.’

‘I could almost understand it if you needed the money–but you don’t.’

‘Ever read Freud?’ Kailash asked derisively.

‘No jury is ever going to believe you. The affidavit you signed–you said Roddie only wanted one testicle injected. Why didn’t you tell the truth then?’

I shoved the photograph of her and Roddie across the table at her. Unconcerned she picked it up and examined it, a sly smile crossed her face as if even now she did not regret what she had done to him.

‘Not even you believed me when I told the truth. I knew what I could get away with and it worked.’

‘Well–you’re not going to get away with it this time. Hector McVie wants you to plead to culpable homicide–I’ve got him to agree to that.’ I coughed to cover my unease. ‘On the basis that you had diminished responsibility.’ I finished hurriedly, but started up again so that she did not have a chance to speak. ‘Hector also said that he could guarantee that Lord MacDonald would sentence you to four years–you’d be out in two; it’s the deal of the century.’

Kailash stood up. The chair fell loudly on the floor.

‘The deal of the century?’

She spat it right back at me.

Turning her back to me, I thought she was going to leave. Instead she pulled her white silk trousers down, just enough to show me a well-toned brown buttock. On the pert muscle was a keloid scar.

‘When you can tell me what that is,’ she screamed, jabbing her finger into it, ‘then we’ll talk. You’ve got a lot to learn, Brodie.’

Looking at the scar made me feel faint. It was still so vivid, so raw. Time hadn’t made the wound heal in any way that could make what I was looking at acceptable. Kailash had been branded, and my sympathy for her was only reinforced by the fact that she was being so emotional for the first time in front of me. But, like my client, I had a professional duty–and being horrified or empathetic didn’t come into it.

‘I’ve seen one before. Not as distinct but I haven’t been able to get much information on it.’

Something in my voice made her relent. Softly her zip screeched as she refastened her trousers, and sat down. In my mind’s eye all I could see was the scar.

‘It’s a brand. Like a cattle brand. The symbol was constructed out of very fine metal and then it was heated to 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. Branding is very rare–in New York it seems that everyone has a tattoo and yet there won’t be many people who have a brand. For those that do it’s an art form–mine was not.’

Standing up to talk, it seemed to me that the symbol was still burning Kailash. Her voice was distant, unaffected by emotion.

‘The mark is caused by a third degree burn–hence very few people willingly brand themselves.’

‘When was yours done?’ I probed.

‘I was seven–and it didn’t heal well, that’s why the brand is raised on me.’

‘What does the symbol mean? I take it that’s important?’ I asked.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t work it out,’ Kailash replied.

‘The one I saw was not as…’ I fought for the correct word, ‘distinct as yours.’

‘Because it was a lot older,’ she answered, taking a deep breath like a swimmer going under water.

I kept quiet, forcing her to continue speaking, but she didn’t–she got up and dropped her trousers again; too fascinated to be embarrassed I examined the keloid scar.

‘It’s a pentacle. A Masonic, and Templar mark. Sir Robert Moray–the first known Mason–used it when he signed the minutes of the Edinburgh lodge in 1641. He called it his Mason’s mark.’ If I was expecting her to be impressed by my knowledge, then I was sadly mistaken.

Kailash shook her head.

‘Look again,’ she hissed. Turning round, she caught my eye. ‘You’re always jumping to conclusions–you’re too impatient, Brodie.’ I’d heard that criticism before, but I still couldn’t believe that patience is a virtue.

Placing my thumb and forefinger on her warm soft skin, I stretched the scar, irrationally afraid that I was hurting her. Closer examination revealed the error of my previous discourse.

‘It’s reversed! The pentacle is upside down!’ I was excited by this discovery.

‘And…?’ Kailash moved her hands in circles in the air, signing for me to continue.

‘And a reversed pentacle is the sign of Baphomet–the goat-headed god.’

‘More,’ she said simply.

‘The Templars were accused by the Inquisition of worshipping Baphomet and…’ I pre-empted her next prompting, trying to buy some time; there was something else that was niggling me, and her too, I thought.

‘Baphomet is an old French word the origin of which simply means Mohammed.’

‘Interesting, Brodie, but not relevant–think of where you saw the sign last. And what manner of man it was on.’

‘Well, obviously it was Lord Arbuthnot–and he was a legal man.’ I shrugged my shoulders.

‘No!!’ Kailash’s scream ripped through the air. It was as if a lightning bolt had struck my subconscious, jolting it into action.

‘Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley claimed it had an esoteric significance. If one point was upwards it represented good and if one point was downwards then it was evil.

‘Then if Alistair MacGregor chose that symbol–and opted to have it burned into his flesh at 1400 degrees–what type of man do you think he was?’ Kailash was frustrated with me, but I was reluctant to give her the answer she wanted.

‘For God’s sake, Brodie, look beyond the uniform the man wore. Think of what you have discovered about him since his death.’

‘His drug damaged heart; your accusations of him cottaging in the East End…’

‘You’re not asking the right questions, Brodie. Think, think. Just ask the questions that your intuition tells you to ask.’

That was the heart of the problem for me, for any lawyer. You don’t go to university to learn the law; you go to have your mind trained. All my education had instilled in me never to ask questions that I did not know the answer to; such preparation disconnects your heart, that’s why lawyers have spawned a million jokes in every language.
What’s the difference between a lawyer and a vampire? A vampire only sucks blood at night.

Sitting there in that prison room, listening to Kailash’s erratic breathing, I knew my life was hanging in the balance. It seemed a ridiculous directive. What did I need to know to save myself, never mind Kailash?

It was after all very simple.

As soon as I opened my mind, it was staring me in the face–it had probably been there all along.

‘God, Kailash–I’ve been trying to find out what’s going on but you know all the answers. You always know them, always have known them but have held back.

‘Kailash–you’re the missing girl, aren’t you?’

My words were, in truth, a statement of fact which I had finally recognised, but yet again Kailash evaded me.

‘Thank you for the compliment, Brodie–but surely I’m too old to be classified as a girl?’ With that, she smiled her set smile, her public smile, and continued to hide from me.

‘Look, you can play all the games you want to–maybe you get some weird kick out of all of this–but don’t take me down with you. Don’t do it, Kailash.’

I got up to walk, to stride across that tiny room. I needed to pace. Kailash remained silent. I tried to wait her out; it was just too damned hard and she was too good at it.

‘You’re the key to all of this–Moses, the girls. How does the abandoned baby fit into it all?’

Gripping the table, her knuckles went white. Was the show over, or had it just begun?

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Brodie McLennan. I’m not the key–that baby is.’

‘Please tell me. I’m getting lost in all this.’ I was ready to beg. Kailash’s eyes flicked over me. Sensing my distress, she laid a hand on my curls and smoothed them. Was it back to the professional Ms Coutts, always there to do whatever the punters needed? Was she working me now?

‘Brodie, Brodie, Brodie–do I need to spell it out to you? There were always girls–there were always pregnant girls. And when you get pregnant girls, you get babies. Not as often as you should–but sometimes, someone slips through the net.’

‘Stop talking in riddles, Kailash. Did you? Did you slip through the net?’

‘In a way, yes. There was a baby once, a baby who was mine,’ she said flatly.

‘Who was the father?’ I asked–but inside I already knew the answer.

‘You know who the father was. You know who the father was to all of those babies of all of those girls–me included.’

She was going to make me say it, and then she was as good as saying she was guilty of murder. With me roped into withholding evidence and everything that went with it.

‘OK–it was Lord Arbuthnot.’

‘No,’ she replied.

My breathing stopped.

I was completely lost.

‘No,’ she said again. ‘It wasn’t “Lord Arbuthnot”–it was just plain old Alistair MacGregor.’

‘But you said he’d never been a client,’ I shouted at her. More lies, was that all she was capable of?

‘For Christ’s sake, I was thirteen when my baby was born–do you really think the devil pays for his privileges? I was Alistair MacGregor’s slave and I was marked by his brand. The brand you have just seen, the brand you have just touched.’

So again I had asked the wrong question. I might have got to this point a lot quicker if I had asked if she had ever had sex with Alistair MacGregor. But then again, she would have denied that. The only thing she would admit to was that Alistair MacGregor had sex with her.

‘Why did you throw the baby into the sea?’ I asked, although I think I could understand why a thirteen-year-old who had been repeatedly raped and brutalised would throw away the spawn of such an encounter.