Читать книгу: «Dark Angels», страница 2
THREE
There was no traffic–quite right too, normal people should be in bed at this time of night/morning. The cobbles were greasy and wet though, and I had to keep my speed down to stop the bike from skidding on the road.
Driving conditions were treacherous. I had no time to enjoy the beautiful buildings as me and Awesome climbed Dundas Street in the heart of the New Town.
Stuck at the traffic lights at the bottom of Hanover Street, the Sphinx sitting atop of the National Gallery stared down ominously at me. If she was foretelling something, I couldn’t read her warnings, but I knew that the day would bring a stark new world for someone. Out there, somewhere, a wife was waking up to the news that her husband was dead. Does he have children, I wondered? If so, how will they feel? They will be expected to walk upright, go to work or school, and keep a roof over their heads. Crime rips people apart and I see it every day, it’s what pays my mortgage and it’s what keeps me awake at night. It surprises me that more people don’t seek revenge.
The lights changed, and my musings continued. I always think on my bike, solve problems, but Kailash Coutts eluded me. What could this man have done that was so heinous it warranted his murder? Kailash was the self-appointed dissolute ruler of the city. Her wealth, which was considerable, was built on men’s depravity, but to acquire her fortune, she must have seen everything (and been well paid for it). What could have been so new to her, or so terrible, that she felt she had to deal with it–permanently?
I wanted to know who this man was who had been dismissed by her. He was probably white, with the usual number of fingers and toes; he was doubtless older than my twenty-eight years. He would be ordinary by most standards, and I’d imagine his wife and work colleagues would have no idea of his secret life. Or would they? One thing my work has taught me: you can never tell someone else’s vice, unless you have that particular sin in you. It was a truth I often saw in my work. Edinburgh is the city of split personalities, its establishment was the inspiration for the original schizo-boys, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and there were plenty of men out there who still led pretty effective double-lives of suburban normality married to episodes in the likes of Kailash Coutts’ dungeon. There wasn’t much I could say in favour of Kailash herself, but at least what you saw with her was what you got, or in any event, it was after the Roddie Buchanan scandal.
Edinburgh Castle sat, impenetrable on its rock, shrouded in mist, as I turned down the Royal Mile, past Deacon Brodie’s pub. The sign on the tavern wall told the true tale of his downfall and continued the myth of two-faced Edinburgh denizens: ‘worthy by day, a gentleman burglar by night, hung on the very gallows he invented’. As a child, I had stood with my mother in front of the painting of the hanging Deacon, relentlessly questioning her: was he my namesake? Was I named after Deacon Brodie? To my disappointment, she always blasted my romanticism out of the water, repeatedly telling me that I was named after the old tea factory that our thirteenth-storey flat overlooked. I still clung to the hope that I had more in common with a licentious, gambling, thieving criminal hanged for his sins than a packet of tea.
On the opposite corner to the pub that still drew me in, outside the High Court, sat a statue of Hume, the father of Scottish law. Draped in a sheet, I felt the artist could have used some aesthetic licence–the sagging pectorals of the carved man made me swerve every time I drove past, although it appeared that only the pigeons and I took any notice of him.
I increased my speed and Parliament House sped by. The route to St Leonard’s was a trail of the crime history of Edinburgh, and the narrow closes where body snatchers and serial killers Burke and Hare plied their trade to keep university anatomists busy flew past. Now a city of repute, the Capital could not easily erase its disreputable past. The new Scottish Parliament building at the foot of the Mile did nothing to expunge its notoriety–a series of architectural and financial disasters had led us to a point where the whole business had made Edinburgh a laughing-stock and bought only a few dodgy constructs with what looked like bingo-winner stone cladding.
On every corner in Edinburgh, I see an imprint of crime overlaid onto the landscape. I looked up at Arthur’s Seat, the Salisbury Crags looming ominously in the early morning skyline, and remembered the German bride thrown over its cruel edges to her death. Not too heartbreaking for her new husband as he collected the insurance money. Everywhere was the same, every place had a story of cruelty or jealousy or lust or evil. St Leonard’s Police Station nestles at the foot of Arthur’s Seat, in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town, and is not averse to putting a few new nasty stories into the history of the city. Ordinarily, the streets around the station are, by and large, deserted. But as I approached it in the early hours, it looked like a three-ringed circus. This spelled trouble.
Reporters with notepads and tape recorders, like flies on a corpse. They were everywhere. A television crew was on the street, a man in a sodden trench coat talking into a microphone, his face serious as a grinding camera recorded him for the morning news.
They were all waiting impatiently, for my arrival. I could have kicked myself for not stopping to put some make-up on, but I genuinely hadn’t realised there would be this much interest in Kailash so early on in the case. Someone at St Leonard’s must have made a tidy backhander alerting the hacks to this one. Reluctantly, I parked and made my way towards them–I didn’t want to look dazed and tired in a million homes tomorrow, but without the benefit of a full-blown Jo Malone overnight kit and emergency make-up box in my backpack, I’d have to accept it.
Jack Deans was the first one to notice me as I pulled off my helmet. I always feel obliged to say, ‘Jack Deans, prize-winning investigative journalist’ when I introduce him to anyone. I preferred not to recognise that I still got a very worrying flutter every time the fucked-up waster looked at me. Christ knows why. He was a decade past his best–and that would have been if he had spent his best years sober. A former international rugby player, he towered above me. His eyes slowly lowered to meet mine. They were deep, deep blue and he managed to draw me into his stare–or maybe he was sleep-deprived too and couldn’t focus very well.
Deans was definitely handsome, in a worn out sort of way. In his younger years, he covered war zones and corrupt dictators; in his latter years he had lost himself in a morass of laughable conspiracy theories and discovered that he couldn’t quite find enough clarity at the bottom of a bottle of Laphroaig. He claimed he wasn’t drinking these days, but I’d seen him slip enough times to know that he didn’t have a permanent pass for the wagon. I had to shake myself out of my very private but still highly mortifying crush on Deans–he’d never let me live it down if he ever found out. His grey black hair flopped over his right eye as he approached me and I drew myself to my full height (five foot four plus the three inches I got from the rather snazzy Cuban heels on my hand-made biker boots).
‘Brodie!’ shouted Deans, his voice shaped by a past affair with whisky and cigarettes. (‘No! No! No!’ I told myself. ‘It’s shaped by booze and fags and cancer and hardened arteries and all sorts of manky stuff. He is not not not sexy.’)
‘I take it you’re here for Kailash?’
The woman had turned into Madonna–she needed no surname. I was tired and I did actually resent his familiarity, even if I did, on a dull night, often want to get into his no-doubt-vile-but-very-well-filled pants.
‘No comment,’ I said tersely.
‘I’ve been standing here, in this pissing rain, for almost two hours–give me something. Please? Please, Brodie? Pretty please?’
The rain had plastered his hair to the side of his grizzled cheek. Although it was raining, the night air was still–after about thirty seconds with the man, as usual, my bizarre crush had worn off and I just wanted to slap him for assuming he had any right to information from me. I was also not so smitten that I didn’t wonder how he could have been there for nearly two hours unless someone had called him pretty bloody sharpish.
I ignored Jack Deans and made my way to the front door of the station and he followed me. His past glories were still sufficiently bright in the eyes of the other journalists present for them to hang back deferentially.
The man was tracking me. I felt his eyes bore into me but continued to ignore him, until he grabbed my arm. Instinctively, I smashed my helmet into his knee: to his acolytes (and the CCTV outside the station door), it looked like a clumsy accident, but we knew differently. He crashed to the ground, like a newly cut Christmas tree.
Magic moment officially broken.
He grabbed my ankle on his way down. Almost toppling, I angrily held my balance. I stared at him, now just wanting this fine gentleman of the press to bugger off out of my way so that I could get on with my job. Rather than look annoyed, or even pained, the face of Deans was the picture of smugness.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ he whispered.
I wouldn’t give him the upper hand, wouldn’t start our usual tit-for-tat.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ he asked again, slightly louder this time.
I waited all of five seconds before breaking.
‘No, Jack, I don’t know. I don’t know which schemy wee copper has phoned you out of your stench-filled pit at this time of the morning. I don’t know how many Big Macs or cans of cash-and-carry lager you’ve paid him for his trouble. I don’t know why so many half-bit hacks are gathered outside when all they’re going to do is run more pictures of tarts in mini-skirts with a cut-and-paste job pretending to be a story. But I bet, I just bloody bet, you’re going to tell me.’
I stood with my hands on my hips, feeling quite pleased with myself. Losing your cool and shouting outside a cop shop while on professional duty was always a good way to start a case.
Jack Deans stood back from me and mirrored my pose, a smile creeping onto his lips. He let his eyes wander all over my face, and, for a moment, I thought I almost saw a flicker of sympathy.
‘Brodie?’ he asked, as if I’d know the answer. ‘Brodie? They haven’t told you, have they?’
I kept my silence this time. If he had news of Kailash, he’d be bursting to tell me anyway.
The next words out of his mouth were a statement, not a question.
‘You don’t know who she’s murdered.’
A smile of satisfaction crossed his face. I had to hand it to the grandstanding bastard–this round was going to him.
‘Why didn’t they tell you, Brodie?’
The same question was beginning to float through my mind.
‘If I was you, Brodie, I’d figure out who wanted to throw me to the wolves.’
Jack Deans knew that his special status was coming to an end, the press pack descending, and me running out of patience.
He propelled me through the doors into the police station in one fluid movement.
‘Alistair MacGregor,’ he whispered in my ear.
I had no time to answer him.
I had no time to think.
I could only assume that I hadn’t heard him correctly.
FOUR
What was wrong with Kailash Coutts? Could she just not keep her hands off the Scottish judiciary? Like most of the men she came into contact with, Alistair MacGregor had another identity–but this one didn’t involve bondage and baby nappy fantasies. No, this one was a shitload more complicated. The dead man wasn’t known as Alistair MacGregor. He was known by his full title, Lord Arbuthnot of Broxden, Lord President of the Court of Session, or, to make things simpler: the highest Law Lord in Scotland. No wonder Sergeant Munro was so keen to get this one processed quickly, and no wonder the entire Scottish media was camped outside St Leonard’s in the wee small hours.
I didn’t have any time to wallow in the misery that was hurtling towards me–times were bad when Jack Deans seemed to be the only one giving me a hand–as the full wonder that was front-house in an Edinburgh cop shop opened out in front of me. The smirks on the faces of the police officers at the desk could have made me regret some of my past harsh cross-examinations, but I was more concerned with trying to block out the truly awful rendition of ‘Rawhide’ that was going on as I made my way to the desk. No introductions were necessary. I’d spent far too much of my time here in the past. Desk Sergeant Anderson waddled towards me, red faced and huffing from the exertion of moving two feet without a pie in his hand. His cheap white shirt was see-through, and puckered over his vast gut, the only accessory being some worn-in underarm sweat stains. A veteran, coming up to retirement age, he made it known he’d seen–in his words–young ‘punks’ like me come and go. Given that I was also pretty sure he dreamed of himself with a shiny ‘Sheriff’ badge pinned to his chest, I wasn’t exactly bothered. What did worry me was the fact that he was breathing so heavily he was either going to have an orgasm in front of me, or he was working up to some godawful joke that he’d laboured over since the last time we met. At least the first option might be funny.
‘I’d like to take you to the cells, Miss McLennan…’ he wheezed, pausing for dramatic effect as the lackeys around him waited for the punch line. ‘But you might call me a liar.’
Had the Marx Brothers suddenly been arrested, dragging in Laurel and Hardy with them? Had Tommy Cooper come out of cryogenic hibernation to announce a new career in law enforcement with Ricky Gervais and John Cleese as his loyal sidekicks? Or had some fat sweaty bastard of a useless copper just tried–in vain–to score a lame point against someone who wouldn’t shite on him if he paid Kailash rates? Whatever the reason, St Leonard’s erupted with joy at the witticism launched into posterity–Anderson wouldn’t be able to move for bacon butties and Irn Bru for the rest of his shift given the joy he had bestowed on his colleagues with his pathetic introduction. I vaguely recalled our last meeting–a police assault case involving some wealthy young pro-hunt protesters. I won, although the verdict owed more to the judicial loyalties of the bench, than any great legal point on my behalf. Every dog has its day, and this was Sergeant Anderson’s. His young posse were enjoying his bravado, especially the ones who had also received a tongue lashing from me when they had appeared in the witness box.
Just as I was trying to boost myself with the facts of my incredibly superior existence and immaculate professionalism, I caught sight of my reflection in the plate glass windows of the station. Normally, my best feature is my hair; at the moment it looked like the stuffing that escapes from horsehair settees. Dark auburn curls had turned to frizz with the help of the damp night air and my motorbike helmet. The rain and spray from the roads had soaked through my leather jacket, leaving me no alternative but to remove it. I should have known better. I was wearing my favourite t-shirt, soft, grey, and very worn. The kind of garment you wear to bed when your mum says you look a bit peaky. Unfortunately, in this scenario, I don’t have the sort of cleavage which makes a police station full of men look away. They didn’t like me personally and they hated what I stood for–but all that could be forgotten amidst the amazing revelation that I possessed breasts. Sergeant Anderson’s moment of glory was stolen as an entire cop shop launched into a communal wet-t-shirt fantasy. It could be worse, I told myself, before remembering that the belt buckle holding up my leather trousers bore the Harley legend: ‘Born to Ride’.
As I followed Sergeant Anderson to the staircase door leading to the cells, I tried to block out the hilarious comments being lobbed my way. There was no denying that I enjoyed the attention that came from being a court lawyer when it suited me, and on my terms, but tonight, going into whatever lay in front of me, I could do without anyone’s eyes and remarks. In fact, I’d have paid good money for an uptight Marks and Spencer suit and button-down shirt. I didn’t exactly look the picture of legal respectability, or the embodiment of my infamous claim to fame as youngest solicitor advocate in Scottish legal history. Still, no matter that I could hide behind all sorts of professional titles such as Writer to the Signet (alongside Sir Walter Scott, no less)–in this place, I was the lowest of the low: a lawyer and a woman. Even my client could probably expect better treatment than me. God knows what she would make of my appearance–actually, she’d probably think that she was being visited by one of her peers, and not a very good-looking one at that. Alongside wondering how Kailash Coutts would interpret me, I also briefly thought of what my mother would say–discomfort made me shut that voice off pretty sharpish.
Sergeant Anderson and I formed the start of a cavalcade as we moved down into the bowels of the station. We weren’t alone for long–passing by offices, we were joined by their occupants on spurious errands. They all wanted to see it. To witness the showdown between myself and Kailash Coutts.
How would I react to meeting with the woman who was accused of killing another member of my profession?
How would I react to meeting the woman who had asked for me by name to represent her even though we had nothing but a history of mistrust and deceit?
How would I react to meeting the woman I had always suspected had called the papers to set up Roddie Buchanan and almost ruin me in the process? Although I was Roddie’s junior partner, under Scottish law, I was jointly and severally liable for the debts of our entire firm. This meant that the creditors could come to me for the money had the scandal ruined Lothian & St Clair. I, in turn, would have had to sue Roddie to see a penny of that money ever again. It was a close thing. The scandal and gossip arising out of the Kailash Coutts debacle threatened the very existence of the firm. Clients were bleeding away. Our overheads, mostly high spec offices in Castle Terrace, were prohibitive, and the bank had called in our overdraft. Unpredictably, the last moment change of heart from Kailash Coutts saved us. By signing the spurious affidavit about Roddie’s single rather than dual bollocking, she gave me the ammunition to raise the defamation action.
As our motley crew continued downwards to the cells, the smell assaulted me. I felt myself gagging. The noises from behind the locked steel doors made me think of Bedlam. Ruby the turnkey shuffled towards me. I always thought of Ruby as symbolic of this place–nothing was quite right, but there was enough of a superficial attempt to make outsiders think everything could hold together just a bit longer. Thirty denier black tights attempted to cover her gnarled, varicose veined legs. They failed. Her peroxide blonde hair had the vague look of something that had seen a hairdresser once, but the visit had resulted in locks the texture and consistency of a scouring pad. It was in a very fashionable style–for the 1950s, which was approximately the last time any man had considered her attractive.
Her real name was Jean, but she always seemed like a Ruby to me in honour of the bright red lipstick she slashed over her gash of a mouth. To be honest, I had been torn between naming her ‘Ruby’ or ‘Blue’–the latter would have been equally appropriate in recognition of the two slabbed cakes of eye shadow adorning her drooping lids. Ruby was oblivious to her failings, but she eyed me up as if I was something she had trodden upon in the street. Obviously, I did not fit her notion of glamour. Fag ash hung from her mouth and keys at her side. Deftly she fingered the collection, recognising every one by touch alone. She unlocked the door–I had never noticed any of them creak before, but when a small crowd is silent, holding its breath, every little noise is exaggerated.
The door swung outwards from the twelve-foot cell, briefly obscuring my vision. Epinephrine was surging through my body, heightening my senses, so that I became aware of a scent, delicate and sweet, dancing towards me.
I had been taken aback when I saw Kailash Coutts in the flesh for the first time.
There are women whose eyes meet for a moment, and, although they are not friends, they know each other. Instantaneously, they sum one another up, their eyes flicking from hair to shoes, and for a second their souls unite. When I met her, I thought: I could be friends with you. We are women at the height of our respective professions, daily we fight men to get on top. In my case it was, thankfully, only figuratively.
I recalled the bald details given to me about my client: Female, forty-one years of age, mixed race. Those empty words didn’t come close to describing her, the photographs I had seen didn’t do her justice.
Kailash Coutts was a woman gifted by nature–and what nature didn’t give her, she went out and bought. And she certainly knew where to shop. Her long, black hair fell glossily to her shoulders, as she turned to look at me it rippled like a waterfall. A few seconds in her presence and I wasn’t sure whether the voice inside my head sounded like Mills & Boon or Loaded.
‘You’ve got five minutes.’ Sergeant Anderson’s voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘I’ve got paperwork to do if Ms Coutts is to appear in court today.’
I was astounded at the respect he was giving my client. And perhaps a tad resentful that I was never accorded the same. What was it about her, and why didn’t I have some of it? Kailash was the product of an affair between a married Donegal nurse, and a young surgeon from the Punjab. Her father disappeared home to an arranged marriage, her abandoned mother threw herself on the charity of her cuckolded Irish husband. In his generosity, he agreed to keep the child, and raise it as his own provided the baby was white. When she was born, it was immediately obvious that Kailash’s olive skin did not pass the paper bag test. If her skin were lighter than a brown paper bag, she would have been kept and passed off as a genetic throwback to the Spanish Armada that wrecked itself on the rocks off the west coast of Ireland. Unfortunately for the young Kailash, mixed-race babies are often very dark skinned in the early days of their lives. Her fate was sealed. Home for her was a series of fostering residences. Nobody wanted to claim the dark eyed child as their own.
Times change. My father abandoned my own mother, yet it was acceptable in society for her to raise her fatherless child alone. My mother adored me–in her own way–and was always determined to give me every opportunity possible, with or without a man by her side. If I had been consigned to the life that Kailash had led, would I have walked in her footsteps?
I’m a sucker for any fatherless child. As I looked into the black eyes of Kailash Coutts, I swore that I would do everything I could to get her off. I knew that I was in danger of committing professional suicide. The woman who had almost ruined my firm, almost ruined me personally, was now about to be charged with the murder of one of the highest Law Lords in the country. And, on the basis of us both being deserted wee girls, I had decided she was my new best pal.
I grabbed her arm as she walked out to Sergeant Anderson. ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ I reminded her. ‘Use that right. This morning there will be a court hearing. We will make no plea or declaration in response to the charge of murder. Later, there will be a judicial examination. It will be tape recorded, and at that stage we must state your defence, otherwise the Crown can found upon our silence.’
‘Our.’
I was already linking myself emotionally to her. I would have to pull back, but as Kailash smiled at me, I realised grimly that it wasn’t going to be any time soon. I hoped she understood what I was saying, hoped she recognised the coded message in my words. I did not want to hear that she was guilty, as that would place me in an awkward position as an officer of the court. I was giving her time to think up a defence.
I stood for a moment, watching her walk away to be charged with murder, and I silently cursed my own absent father. I was in her web now, and I was sure Kailash Coutts was not going to let me go.
Бесплатный фрагмент закончился.
