by Grace Monroe
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 flicki
ng 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.
FIVE
‘You look rough.’
‘I feel worse than I look.’
‘Well they do say beauty comes from within, so try to cheer up.’ Lavender smiled at me as she handed me a steaming cup of coffee. In that instant I could have forgiven her anything. Even the fact that she was sitting in my chair didn’t bother me–neither of us harboured any illusions over who really ran the show in my office. Lawyers may be the public face, but the real power lies with their secretaries.
I sipped gingerly on the burning liquid, staring out of my office window at Edinburgh Castle, as Lavender began to read out today’s cases from the diary.
The court diary is the most important record in a legal firm–a missed court date or a misplaced trial is a sack-able offence. The consequences of such a mistake can’t be overstated–it is imprisonment for the client, and even worse for the solicitor. If a punter does not turn up at his trial date, a warrant will be taken for their arrest–if the lawyer doesn’t attend they face contempt of court charges.
Going over the court diary was a ritual that Lavender and I did every morning at 7.30a.m. if we could, we gave it the respect it was due even when a huge case like that of Kailash Coutts was going to blow everything out of the water. So much of my time was going to be spent on her, that I needed to ensure that nothing else was going to suffer.
‘How many trials?’ I asked Lavender.
‘One jury, and a continued High Court job. Robert Dunlop already has his papers, he’ll do it for you, and I’m sending the first year trainee in to sit with him. On top of that,’ added Lavender, ‘we’ve got five summary trials and two of them are in Kirkcaldy.’ Her voice got lower, and although she didn’t exactly mumble, she certainly hurried through the next part of her list of points.
‘I instructed Eddie last night and I dropped the files off at his house.’
She fumbled with the pages of the diary as colour flooded her face. I didn’t have the energy to tease Lavender about her unrequited love for Eddie Gibb. Eddie was a brilliant court lawyer whose genius at the bar was exceeded only by his excess in the bar. I was never quite sure whether it was me or Lavender who kept forgiving Eddie his misdemeanours. I do know that Lavender had to pull him out of the pub on so many occasions we had a code name for it–Eddie was in court nine.
Most of the Sheriffs knew about Eddie’s difficulty and forgave him for it. I reckon that we all knew we had a bit of Eddie in us.
‘You know I like Eddie as much as the next person, Lav, but we’re shooting ourselves in the foot to put him in Kirkcaldy on his own.’
‘So Sheriff Robertson hates him? He’s not too fond of you either, Brodie.’
‘I’m not talking personalities here, Lav–if Eddie has hit the bevvy at lunch time who’s going to pull his arse out the fire? You can’t be in Edinburgh running the show, and Kirkcaldy watching over lover boy.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Brodie–I had to keep other agency lawyers on standby to deal with Edinburgh, leaving you free to cover the custodies–you didn’t call me last night to let me know if you were overstretched and I didn’t want another lecture on “Delectus Personae”. I did my best, and I think Eddie can do this.’
Lavender’s blonde curls bobbed merrily–in contradiction to her mood. Her forty-three-year-old face was untroubled by wrinkles, fat was the filler she preferred to keep her face smooth, and it suited her. She was gorgeous and I loved her like a sister. Never a size 8, her figure was a walking Rubensesque fantasy. She generally drew men to her like moths to a flame, but Eddie’s love of the booze meant that he always seemed one step away from her, even though he relied on her so much.
Lavender knew as much as any solicitor on the team at Lothian & St Clair. She understood what it meant to build a successful criminal practice, and Delectus Personae meant that there were some clients who would only stay with the firm if I represented them. Her intuitive instincts were buzzing last night–she knew we had a client; a Mr Big who would demand my undivided attention.
She just didn’t know who it was yet–I hadn’t summoned the courage to tell her.
Lavender was indispensable to me. After the Kailash affair, the firm’s serious financial trouble meant that my life hung in the balance–the bank balance of Lothian & St Clair. The only way f
or me to find freedom was to make the firm financially successful again. To do this I took on every case I could–but there was one difficulty. Although I was prepared to work every hour outside the office, I couldn’t be in two places at once. I didn’t have the resources to take on extra bodies, so I had a team of agency solicitors. Agency lawyers are like Japanese Ronin–Samurai without masters. They are lone warriors who owe allegiance to no one. The Japanese didn’t trust them–but I didn’t have a choice. Anyway, it was generally left to Lavender to keep them in check.
She interrupted my thoughts. ‘I’ll find out you know.’
‘What?’
‘The secret you’re trying to keep from me–I’ll find out. I always do.’
It was true, no one could have any privacy whilst Lav was about. You simply had to accept it because, as well as running my life for me, her gift of hacking into computers was so useful at other times.
It all started with eBay. Lavender began buying and then selling. Buying from the fifteen-year-old shoplifters and then passing it off on the net. Quite the entrepreneur. No one was any the wiser and her computer skills developed until her natural inquisitiveness got the better of her.
There was a man–with Lavender every story could begin that way–and she wanted to know more about him. When does infatuation become stalking, as she is so fond of saying? Anyway, this man was interested in computers so Lavender took a course on computer security–how to keep company firewalls safe from hackers. To build firewalls you have to know how to take them down, and the secrets hidden behind those walls were irresistible to her.
The mystery man worked in a city bank, and the Metropolitan police completely misunderstood Lavender’s interest in the bank’s security systems. The outcome was leaving her former life in London behind and a change of name–Lavender Ironside, stolen from a gravestone in a Highland graveyard. We were made for each other. Lavender needed me as much as I needed her.
