by Grace Monroe
Hands that were male, but soft and unused to manual work, ripped my shirt open. The palms felt clammy and feminine as the knife slit my bra. It popped open and my breasts swung free as the lingerie was cut from my body.
His face was close to mine as he worked; I could smell Rennies and expensive whisky on his breath. A big man, he towered over me, but I did not feel embarrassed standing there half naked in front of him for he had seen me that way before.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked. ‘Why, Fishy?’
FIFTY-ONE
Trembling as I spoke, I prayed that I was wrong, knowing all the while how unlikely that was.
‘You told me she didn’t need to see me–you promised you would take care of all of this.’ Droning and stamping like a two-year-old child, he loosened his grip on me as he spoke to his companion.
‘Whether she’s seen you or not will be of no consequence after tonight.’
The lady spoke and Fishy paid heed.
‘Why the fuck are you doing this?’ I screamed.
A heavy hand slapped me flat across the face making my ears ring, causing the blindfold to slip from my eyes.
‘You’re in the presence of a lady–don’t use language like that.’
‘Tell me, you fucker…why?’ Yelling at him I was hopeful that someone might hear.
‘They’re not always wrong, Brodie.’ Tiny pieces of his spit flecked my face as he snarled at me.
‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Who’s not always wrong?’
‘Of course you don’t understand what I’m getting at…but then I’ve never thought you were as bright as people gave you credit for. Makes sense you had someone helping you along all this time, smoothing the path. Still, notwithstanding that, even I thought you would have sussed me before now.’
‘Sussed you? Sussed you? Christ, Fishy, what do you mean?’
‘Think about it. Think about all that’s been happening to your poor old pal, Fishy. How the nasty coppers have made his life so horrible recently.’
The penny dropped. ‘The details on that child porn site? It was you. You were never set up, were you? You stupid bastard–you used your own credit card for that filth.’ I barely finished my sentence before he punched me in the guts stealing my breath.
‘Who sent you the photograph album, Fishy? Where did you get that from?’
‘I did. I sent it.’
Lady Bunny Arbuthnot, the widow, floated into view.
‘For his entertainment and edification. Unlike you, I think Richard has possibilities.’ Her manicured fingers caressed his face. She dug her forefinger into his cheek, drawing blood. He made no protest and I knew then that it would be no use appealing to Fishy.
‘But when you sent the photographs your husband was still alive.’
Her face hardened, emotions frozen in an icy mask.
‘He had become aware that Kailash was back. He was always obsessed with that whore. He had some ridiculous thoughts of replacing me, so I needed an alternative companion.’
Bile rose in my throat as I saw her stroke Fishy’s crotch; to my disgust he was stiff.
‘So, are all paedophiles pretty much interchangeable to you? Do you just swap them around, one for another? Just tell me why–explain to me please–why–why I must die?’ I moved my head from side to side trying to sense her; fear stopped my heart when I did. The heated tongs were hovering just above my left breast.
I knew exactly who was pulling the strings here–and I also knew that Bunny MacGregor would hate to kill me without explaining her motivation. Her pleasure in murdering me would be diminished if I were not able to share, or to be a part of her master plan.
I remained motionless as Fishy untied my hands and then retied them so that I could move. I did not dare to do so because ‘the spider’ glowed red hot, centimetres above my nipple.
‘Did you send me that fucking thing?’ I spat at her.
My head bounced off the gravestone as Fishy smacked me in the mouth.
‘Shut up, Brodie! I warned you about swearing in front of the lady. I sent it to you and I took it from your room this morning.’
‘Are you aware of the significance of this place?’
With one hand on my ear Bunny MacGregor pulled me out into the graveyard again.
‘Look at these stones–do you have any idea what these men did?’
She twisted my ear so hard I had to answer ‘No’. As she released me, the side of my face stung as if I had been lashed. My best chance to remain alive would be to keep her talking until the others arrived.
‘When was the Battle of Bannockburn?’ she asked, twisting my ear again like some demented history teacher. The Battle of Bannockburn is probably the largest battle ever fought upon British soil. The Scots were outnumbered three to one, and at the last minute they secured victory and their independence. Scotland remained independent for 289 years until the crowns were joined through inheritance. Every Scottish school child knows it, and even in the middle of all this, my early history lessons stayed with me.
‘The Battle of Bannockburn was on the 24 June 1314,’ I stuttered.
‘St John’s Day, a very important day for these men.’
My liver was crushed as, bent double, Bunny MacGregor dragged me to the next site. Pushing me down she banged my head off the flat stone. Dragging me by the hair to the next grave she was slightly out of breath as she spoke again.
‘This man…’ she kicked me hard in the ribs; I feared that the toe of her pointed shoe had pierced the skin between the ridges of bone, ‘rode up through the Scottish ranks and onto the field at Bannockburn. The enemy were exhausted–when the English soldiers saw that a band of Knights Templar were fighting for Scottish freedom, they fled the field.’
Bunny MacGregor’s eyes flashed with fervour as she spoke.
‘The Knights Templar were the richest, most influential force…’
‘Not that powerful because they were wiped out,’ I hissed, interrupting her speech. There was blood pouring from the side of my mouth. The same shoe that had kicked my chest, now landed on my chin knocking me backwards.
‘Whilst it may be true that on the 13 October 1307, Pope Clement V issued orders for the arrest of the knights, some had warning–and escaped.’
Bunny MacGregor circled me as I lay on the ground, inhaling the sweet smell of the burning pine logs, unable to wipe the moist grass stuck to my face, tickling and aggravating my wounds.
‘Of course the Pope was in the pocket of Philip IV. The knights who had escaped the torture had nowhere to run–except Scotland.’
‘Why?’ I asked, desperate to buy time.
‘You ignorant peasant. Before the reformation, the Papal Bull overrode the law of the land, that’s why Henry VIII had to ask the Pope’s permission to get married to Anne Boleyn. When Henry refused to obey Papal orders he was excommunicated.’
Pulling my eyelids open was difficult, for it was as if my eyeballs were made of slow-setting concrete. I blinked several times, to clear the blood on my eyeballs, trying to see Bunny MacGregor. Dressed like part of the hunting set, her dreary green quilted jacket was set off by the jewel-like colours in the patterns on the Hermès scarf, which now poked cheerily out of her pocket. Severely thin, Bunny still looked elegant in spite of her exertions: immaculately groomed, her white hair was too afraid to move. As was I, lying half naked in a graveyard in the middle of nowhere, while my tormentor was lecturing me on world history. I spat out a piece of my tooth on the grass.
‘Of course this place is nothing now–but then it was easily accessible by sea, and the Templars were great sailors you know.’
‘They discovered America,’ said Fishy, and Lady MacGregor threw him a condescending nod. I tried to spit on his shoe but ended up coughing blood instead.
‘Of course he’s quite correct–Columbus used Sir Henry Sinclair’s Templar maps–proof of this fact is Rosslyn Chapel built 100 years before Columbus discovered America. The ornate stone fri
ezes show corn on the cob and other vegetables indigenous to that land.’
I must have passed out for a second or two, her hand was cold and skeletal as it hit my face.
‘For self preservation these warrior monks had to forego their oath of celibacy–did you see on the gravestones that they intermarried with the great clans? They kept their knowledge and wealth intact–from these roots Scotland has been led.
‘When Robert the Bruce died, he asked that his heart be buried in Jerusalem–trusted nobles set off to the Holy Land to carry out his wishes. On 25 March 1330 at the battle of Tebas de Ardales, the Scots riding vanguard were surrounded. Lord Douglas, who carried the casket containing the Bruce’s heart around his neck, took it off and threw it into the battle shouting:
“Braveheart, that ever foremost led,
Forward as thou wast wont. And I
Shall follow thee or else shall die.”
‘All of them died except one–and he retrieved the heart from the battlefield and buried it in Melrose Abbey. In the nineteenth century Robert the Bruce’s body was dug up and it was said that his leg bones were crossed under his skull–and that’s a Templar sign.’
Fishy bent down, and whispered into my face.
‘Is it any wonder that they still run this little country–they run the world! In the American Presidential Campaign, George Bush and John Kerry both belonged to the Skull and Bones society–are you starting to see the connections?’
Bunny MacGregor bent down, and placed the knife on my jugular again.
‘Stand up–carefully,’ she hissed.
I did as I was told.
‘But I still don’t know what all of this has to do with me–or the other girls.’
Staring into her eyes I did not hear him approach.
‘Let her go, Bunny–take me.’ Lord MacGregor stood with his hands in the air.
‘Where are the others?’ I screamed at him, for the knowledge was beginning to dawn on me. In spite of the force she put into her kick I barely felt it as it landed on my chin, either I was concussed or impervious to pain. More likely it was what she said next that numbed me as I prepared to stare God in the face.
‘You fool…but as they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
Bunny MacGregor turned to her father-in-law.
‘You tell her what you’ve done.’
He could not look me in the eye and I knew then that no one else was coming. Bunny had cancelled the others and had come in their stead with Fishy in her shadow.
‘Take me,’ Lord MacGregor implored again.
‘What difference would killing you make–your life’s almost over as it is?’
‘But you’ve hated me for years–think of the satisfaction you’ll get laughing on my grave.’
‘I’ll laugh on your grave anyway–and I will get more pleasure knowing that you will have to live with the knowledge that your line ended at my hand.’
‘Why must I die?’ I asked.
Strangely, I knew that this was the correct question, the question that my grandfather expected me to ask.
‘The Templars discovered scrolls under the Temple of Jerusalem. These scrolls showed that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and had a child. After Jesus was crucified, Mary Magdalene and her daughter went to live in France where they were protected. The bloodline of Jesus runs in the Merovingian line–one of the families that contain this blood are the St Clairs or Sinclair as they are now known.’
Lord MacGregor stopped and looked at his daughter-in-law.
‘History says that the Templars protected the Holy Grail–and that the holy grail is a cup or a chalice. We believe that the old word for womb is chalice–the Holy Grail was the womb of Mary Magdalene. The Sang Greal is the Royal blood that is carried in these families descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
‘My husband carried the Sang Greal–his mother was a Sinclair. I could not allow these pregnant girls to desecrate the blood–to preserve the Holy Grail their wombs had to be cut out.’
Her face was earnest, like a zealot carrying out the word of God.
‘And you must die because you are an abomination–the child of a whore carrying the blood? It’s unthinkable.’ The knife moved up to underneath my chin cutting my skin. She was playing with me, shredding the skin on my neck as she moved the knife up and down.
The blade nicked my jawbone as she fell backwards.
The stone that Joe had dropped on her skull fell to the ground before he untied me.
I’d never been so pleased to see the renegade old bastard in my life.
FIFTY-TWO
‘What took you so long?’ I shouted at Joe. As I pulled my ripped shirt about me, he handed me his jacket, the sleeves of which ended six inches past my fingertips.
Lord MacGregor lifted the knife from the gravestone. A ceremonial dagger with a twelve-inch long blade, the handle was inlaid with twenty-four carat gold, carved to resemble leaves and a bursting spring bud.
‘She obviously wanted to carry out a ritual murder to mark the death of a great warrior or king–it’s an old tradition, one that she has warped to suit her own ends.’
‘Where’s Fishy?’ I asked Joe.
‘C’mon…I’ll show you.’ He picked Lady Arbuthnot up like a sack of potatoes and swung her over his shoulder. It was dark now and I held onto Lord MacGregor as we walked behind Joe to his Jeep Gladiator pick-up truck. He pulled back the retractable canvas roof, and there lay Fishy bound and gagged. Unceremoniously he threw Lady Arbuthnot in beside him. Joe handed me the dagger as he pointed with his finger to the jugular vein on her neck.
‘Hold it here.’
Hard and emotionless his voice would have cracked glass.
Opening the passenger door, Joe pulled down the glove compartment and took out a camera.
‘Say cheese,’ he said, poking Bunny MacGregor until she turned to face him. ‘We owe this to a dying pal–it might be the only justice he gets.’ And as I thought of Duncan lying in the hospice, and her other victims, I was sorely tempted. The white flash scalded my optic nerve. Tears ran down my face as I spoke.
‘Promise me the court won’t be too lenient with her.’ I stuck my face in Lord MacGregor’s ear; he was now sitting in the front passenger seat beside Joe.
‘A problem with this case is that society doesn’t see women–particularly elderly women as serial killers, but ten to sixteen per cent of all serial killers are women. Many of them are elderly carers preying on the weak and infirm–their first weapon of choice, like Bunny’s, is poison. That’s why she used heroin. The girls were drugged with heroin, and then she tortured them. They died from the overdose not their injuries because Bunny dissected them post-mortem.’ I paused to catch my breath and tried to shut out the images of those poor girls flooding my mind.
‘God, Joe–how could I not have seen the links? She kept Fishy onside by providing him with enough material to make a paedophile think he’d died and gone to heaven. She killed those girls, and then she finally tracked me down with Roddie’s help. When Kailash knew what was going on, when Moses got word to her, she came back from Amsterdam. All the while, Bunny MacGregor was watching me through Fishy–he was the one who visited her when her husband died, he was the one who ran me off the road and then kept the whole threatening theory going by saying someone had got his mobile number.’
‘Brodie?’ Lord MacGregor jumped in. ‘There is no way that she will be tried–or go to prison. We simply couldn’t allow the scandal.’
‘You mean she’ll just be allowed to walk free?’ I asked.
‘No; because as long as she is alive and at liberty then your life is in danger. She’ll be placed in a private, secure hospital where she will be watched and guarded twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Not much justice for the kids she killed and abused,’ I shouted.
Poking his finger in his ear, Lord MacGregor answered.
‘Justice must not be done–it must be seen to be done,’ he quoted his so
n at me.
What would happen if the general population knew that Lord Arbuthnot of Broxden, Lord President of The Court of Session was a paedophile and that he did not stop at murder to protect his liberty and reputation?
The question roiled around in my head like an angry black sea.
Finally, I said, ‘I guess the truth wouldn’t be good for business.’
‘That’s an understatement, my dear. That’s why the Enlightenment didn’t support me earlier–to be fair I don’t think they believed the allegations and they thought they could contain his worst excesses.’
‘Well they were wrong,’ I snapped, ‘and children died because of their mistake.’
‘Brodie, I don’t think you can blame them–it’s not the organisation that’s bad. It was one individual–my son and your father–who was rotten to the core.’
‘So I will suffer for the sins of my father?’
The thought chilled me, as I continued. ‘They say in the Bible that the sins of the father shall be visited even unto the third and fourth generation. Will my unborn children be punished?’
‘Don’t be foolish, girl–the Bible was talking about syphilis. Now you get some sleep.’
The banging from the back had stopped.
‘What are we going to do with Fishy?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry about him. As his colleagues would say, he’s going away for a very long time. I intend to contact the Chief Commissioner as soon as I get a signal.’
‘What are you going to charge him with?’ I asked.
‘He’s already been charged,’ he replied.
‘I never liked the man…but in truth I would never have pegged him for a beast.’ Joe shook his head in disbelief.
‘Well, you always say that unless you’ve got that sin you can’t see it in others but in his case it was true.’
I knew that Fishy would be placed before a ‘friendly’ judge; bail would be denied, he would be pressurised into pleading guilty, and then be sentenced for a very long time, but I still couldn’t believe what he was; what I’d lived with. I was a lawyer. I was a reasonably intelligent person. I was a woman. Why did I not see it? What was lacking in me that I could so easily live with someone like that, be their friend for years, and yet pick up nothing? Maybe at the moment it was better for me to focus on my own failings rather than the fact that I had shared my life with someone so twisted.