Dark Angels

by Grace Monroe

  The front door bell rang. Jack’s face tightened with anger, he seemed genuinely concerned about me and I was close to being touched by it.

  ‘Jack–where does Kailash Coutts fit into all this?’

  ‘You’ll get a chance to ask her yourself. Madam Kailash wants to see you.’

  As he stomped off to answer the door, he added: ‘And the all-involved Malcolm says you’re fit enough. That’s him now.’

  I could barely see Malcolm’s face as he staggered in under a mountain of clothes and designer bags. Nice to know he was still able to manage a bit of retail therapy in the midst of his concern for me.

  ‘Been enjoying yourself, Malcolm?’ I asked.

  He looked at the pile he was creating in the middle of my floor as if surprised that they had got there in the first place.

  ‘You’re meeting Kailash–did no one tell you?’

  ‘I’ve been informed that an audience is scheduled, but I still don’t see what that’s got to do with you maxing out your credit card.’

  ‘Well…last time you met, Kailash was a tad concerned about your appearance.’ He nodded, as if he had explained everything perfectly.

  ‘Kailash insists all her girls look the part.’

  Malcolm began derisively throwing all my clothes into the middle of the floor, as Jack Deans smirked, hanging around the edges of the wardrobe, hoping to catch a glimpse of a PVC corset.

  ‘I am not Kailash’s girl,’ I spluttered. Adrenalin propelled my legs onto the wooden floorboards, and the endorphins over rode my pain. I bent down to pick up my own clothes with one hand, throwing Kailash’s offerings aside with the other.

  Catching sight of myself in the mirror, I was stopped in my tracks. My hair looked redder than its usual auburn and its curls had not been tended to for three, hard days. Raising my hand to touch my bruised, grazed cheek, I thought of Patch, and pity welled up inside me. I didn’t recognise the woman before me; I saw instead the scholarship girl, huge dark chocolate eyes staring out of a pinched pale face. Malcolm was right

  —I was a mess.

  As I stood there with Kailash’s offerings in one hand and my own sorry articles in the other, the feel of the expensive cloth between my fingers slipped through. It felt good, even in this state–why was I fighting?

  Isolation is the cruellest of punishments. Before I went to Gordonstoun, it had never occurred to me that I was something less than human because I couldn’t afford to look like others. Survival was my only hope, success my only revenge. I’d thought those days were behind me, but this had brought it all back.

  Clinging to my downtrodden costume went deeper than the clothes. Letting them go meant releasing the final vestiges of my mother. Four days ago, on a thundery night at Dunsappie Loch, my assailant hadn’t won–whoever he was had beaten courage into me.

  I thought I could hear Mary McLennan cheer. This wasn’t going to get me–this was something I could do. Something I could win.

  Jack picked up the Armani suit, and passed it to me just before he excused himself, leaving me in Malcolm’s hands.

  FOURTEEN

  Jack Deans insisted on driving me to Cornton Vale, explaining I would be too tired to drive back. In any event Awesome was my only source of transport, and she had been towed to the garage.

  Heading out of Edinburgh along the M9 to Stirling, it was obvious Jack had fallen on hard times–as if I needed proof. His Jaguar XJ6 was at least twelve years old and smelled like an ashtray. Actually, I liked its faded elegance. The white leather seats were cracked with age, and I could feel a draught on my forehead where there was a hole in the soft top.

  The crown on top of Linlithgow Palace was visible for miles. Jack drove in thoughtful silence, intent on getting me to the women’s prison as fast as he could.

  I, however, was in no rush to meet up with Kailash Coutts. There were too many unanswered questions between us. From my brief encounters with her so far, I held out little hope of getting any straight answers.

  On top of that, our history was almost too much. This woman had nearly destroyed me; I could easily have been a casualty in her war with Roddie Buchanan. If her antics had resulted in the financial collapse of the firm, my life would have gone into freefall; starting with bankruptcy. A domino effect would have resulted in me losing my home and my practising certificate. In effect I would have had to put out a begging bowl to any firm that would take me.

  Edinburgh lawyers are not known for their charity. I don’t exempt myself from this charge, but I’m well used to taking care of myself whenever I can. What had happened between Kailash and Roddie had taken things out of my hands–it was only by getting Kailash to sign that affidavit that I had managed to get some control back. Throughout it all, I had felt uncomfortable that she was pulling the strings more than I was willing to admit–and this was the root of my difficulty now. My intuition kept telling me I was once more a pawn in Kailash’s games, and I could not yet see the path to safety.

  Such thoughts roiled around my mind as the flames from the petrochemical plant at Grangemouth lit the sky. The M9 is a straight road cutting through the heartland of Scotland, an industrial past sitting easily beside a shortbread tin image. All too soon, the phallic monument dedicated to William Wallace, Scotland’s greatest patriot and the tourist icon of Braveheart, was visible; it meant my meeting with Kailash would soon be upon me.

  My mood plummeted, and Stirling Castle reminded me of its past glories. I didn’t want my best days to be behind me. I had just started and, to be honest, work was all I had, something I didn’t want to dwell on too much. Kailash would have to be handled if I was to get out of this how I wanted.

  Cornton Vale is Scotland’s only women’s prison, notorious for the high suicide rate of its inmates. Clearly, imprisonment affects the psyche–some of my clients loved it; they enjoyed the routine and the easy access to drugs. But Kailash was a different type, more akin to a crooked accountant than a street junkie, and such people found loss of freedom much more difficult to accept.

  If I was hoping to gain a psychological advantage over Kailash, it was dispelled the moment she walked into the small, sterile consulting room. Once more the air was filled with her scent. Prisoners who are on remand are allowed to wear their own clothes. As ever, she surprised me wearing a white and gold salwar kameez with a duppatta around her neck.

  Her silk kameez rustled softly as she moved towards me. Smaller than I remembered, her stature did not diminish her presence. Like Marcus Aurelius, she had found that room inside herself. Peace radiated from her. Given her circumstances it was extremely disconcerting.

  ‘Was Malcolm able to help with the pain?’ she asked, without the padding of social niceties.

  Maybe she was wondering whether the effects of what I had been through were even beyond Malcolm’s skills. Her voice had an ambiguous quality. It was difficult for me to identify her roots. I was listening intently to the inflections of her voice so that I did not answer her directly.

  ‘Brodie?’

  It was the first time I had heard her raise her voice. Moving my head slightly to minimise the pain, I made eye contact.

  ‘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 co
nsidered 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.

  FIFTEEN

  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 back
ground 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.