Dark Angels

by Grace Monroe

  Nonetheless, Joe insisted on going through the open door first. I followed closely behind, going so far as to hold onto the belt strapped around his waist. Frank Pearson’s flat was a typical tenement. The hallway was dark, long, and narrow with a high ceiling. The cornice was ornate and made of moulded plaster. The hall was cluttered with evidence of Frank’s sporting life. Unable to see clearly, Joe’s kilt was snagged by Frank’s mountain bike as we skirted past it. Turning round to pull it free from the bike pedals, he managed to hit his head off the surfboard hidden in the shadows and hanging on the wall. Surfing in Scotland seems a contradiction in terms, yet on the Island of Tiree there are some of the best waves in the world. Surfers on the professional circuit descend in their droves to catch the waves, seemingly oblivious to the cold, and Frank sang its praises every holiday.

  I thought I could smell death ahead of me. I doubted Frank would be going to Tiree again unless it was to get his ashes scattered.

  Passing the open living room, we popped our head round the door. The brown carpet was a remnant from the sixties, brown onion swirls hid the dirt that lay in its down-trodden pile. The furniture had either been bought at auction as a job lot or an elderly relative had died and Frank had cleared the house. It was obviously a bachelor pad, nothing matched, and in spite of the fact it was tidy, it was apparent he wasn’t expecting company. The loneliness of his existence overwhelmed me. We were alike. Who would mourn his passing? Who would really grieve for him? Who would feel that all the clocks should stop because he had gone out of their life?

  I didn’t want to answer that question in my own life, so I accepted that I would probably be the one doing the ash scattering and moved on.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  We stood on the threshold of Frank’s bedroom, and instead of answering Joe, I pushed him through the doorway. I hadn’t known what to expect, but whatever it was, it wasn’t what we got.

  ‘Jesus.’ Joe let a spent breath escape his lips, and I, for once, was lost for words.

  At first I couldn’t see a thing as blackout curtains were drawn. I didn’t want to open them for fear of being overlooked. I couldn’t switch the light on in case a neighbour spotted it. Slowly my eyes became accustomed to the dimness. In the background Frank’s radio alarm played softly on waiting for its owner to switch off the button.

  I saw Frank’s hairy legs encased in American tan tights, the type old ladies wear. Although they were clearly queen size, whoever had placed them on him had done so with great difficulty, rips in the nylons ran freely down Frank’s thighs where fingers had been poked through in the effort of pulling them up. In spite of this supreme pulling effort, his assailant was unsuccessful, and the gusset of the tights hung comically half way down his legs. There was no way he could have moved with those on, they would have had the same effect as tying his legs together. Painful childhood memories of wearing woollen tights, with the bum hanging down at the knees ensured that I know what can and cannot be done when clad like that.

  In spite of his round face, Frank was neither fat nor big; in fact looking at him I was surprised how slender he was–but, then again, black is generally considered slimming. Frank’s genitals were tightly bound in black rubber casing, and a taut PVC girdle constricted his chest. The mask that completely covered his face matched the girdle. It had small holes for the eyes and nostrils; they obviously came as a set, but I wasn’t a connoisseur of the outlets where you could get such get-ups. To someone like Kailash, this was as commonplace as office stationery.

  Frank had been hung like a deer from the ceiling. Whoever had done it was not an expert, and the rope had come loose throwing him on the floor.

  ‘Should we check to see if he’s dead?’ Joe was reluctant to go near the body; Frank Pearson looked like a ridiculous wrestler, and the manner of his death robbed him of any gravitas. From the moment this became public knowledge he would be an object of ridicule.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Joe, look at his neck. He’s obviously dead–you couldn’t hold your head like that unless you were.’ I was curt, more at the memory of what Jack Deans had said than anything else. They destroyed your reputation to ensure no one took you seriously.

  ‘There’s no way the police will buy this as suicide–poor bastard’s hands are tied behind his fucking back, Brodie!’ Joe had grown more used to the sight of the corpse and was now walking freely around the bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye I was watching him. I didn’t want to disturb the crime scene, and let them know that we had been there first. We stood back from the body, side by side for warm human contact. I could hear Joe’s breath, and it gave me the courage to examine the body.

  ‘He doesn’t look very stiff.’

  Joe was right. Rigor mortis didn’t appear to have set in. When the muscles relax then become rigid, it is usually within the first twenty-four hours, disappearing within thirty-six hours after death.

  ‘Can you see any purple patches, Joe–because I can’t?’

  Still standing like two stooges I wanted us to look for livor mortis. When the human heart stops pumping, the blood begins to settle in the parts of the body closest to the ground. The onset of this condition appears almost immediately and disappears within twelve hours. As I looked, I knew that there was no way I could accurately estimate the time of death. He must have been alive thirty-six hours ago, because Fishy had spoken to him–so how could I explain what I was looking at, the contradictions shouted out by his body? When Joe was here yesterday, the door was locked–yet open today. Had Frank been with his attacker when Joe was here? Had he heard Joe and thought that he was about to be saved?

  The answer to these conundrums was slowly coming to me. In my rush to get to the body I threw Joe against the wall.

  ‘Call an ambulance, Joe, he’s still alive!’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Prising the noose from Frank’s neck I placed him on his side, trying to secure an airway. Even though I had once been forced to do a certificate in first aid training, I was still surprised that it was coming back. His pulse was faint and weak, his hold on life was slight but there. My mother had always believed that if it was your time nothing could prevent it; if it wasn’t, regardless of the injuries or disease, you made it. I had always disliked this fatalistic attitude but now I prayed that it was not Frank’s time, because fate was about the only chance he had at the moment.

  The Medic One team was there in five minutes. Two green suited paramedics didn’t shy from the body as we had. One medic calmly took the mask from Frank’s face, and began to talk to him, nipping his ear to get his attention. The other turned to us, asking us Frank’s details, if he was allergic to anything–they seemed to assume that we knew him more intimately than we did. I tried to explain that it was by chance that we found him.

  ‘He’s lucky, then,’ answered Green Suit One. ‘He’s misjudged the timing on this one.’

  I looked at Joe who was still staring at the scene before us–‘Timing?’

  ‘Guys who like this sort of thing,’ Green Suit Two jerked his head towards their patient, ‘they usually have it down to a fine art. It’s practically algebra to them.’

  ‘What is?’ asked Joe.

  ‘The difference between shitting their load and topping themselves,’ answered the paramedic.

  ‘You think Frank did this for fun? Why in Christ’s name would anyone want to do this….’ Joe nodded his head at the PVC-bound Procurator Fiscal.

  ‘About five deaths a year occur because of asphyxiophilia–no idea how many more die from enjoying it too much.’

  We looked aghast at the paramedic as he continued.

  ‘Auto-erotic strangulation? Actually, loads more probably die than the official figures show–when families find the bodies they usually cover it up.’

  Joe had cottoned on quickly. ‘No wonder. Poor bastards–suicide is hard enough to deal with, but this…We needed you here fast so I didn’t think to tidy him up.’

  ‘He wasn’t
trying to commit suicide, mate. It’s edgy sex–the ultimate thrill; the problem is there’s always a risk of cardiac arrest and usually the first sign of trouble is your heart stops.’

  The man looked over at his colleague.

  ‘He’s lucky. I think he just passed out because of lack of oxygen, his heart seems fine–but he knocked himself out on the bedside table when he fell.’

  ‘When I see some things–and I’ve seen a lot–I can’t help wondering: who was the first stupid bastard to try it? What gave someone the fucked-up notion to get this into their heads for a laugh?’

  Joe was striking up a conversation to cover his nerves. My response was always to show that I was a walking Wikipedia.

  ‘It’s been around for centuries, Joe–the Marquis de Sade wrote about it in Justine. When there were public hangings, the corpse often had an erection and then ejaculated on the moment of death–the ultimate orgasm. People wrongly assumed it was brought about by the strangulation–in fact it was caused by the snapping of the spine. And there was also syphilis. Men were often left impotent–often they viewed this…’ I waved my hand nonchalantly at Frank’s feet as the paramedics strapped an oxygen mask on him, ‘as a cure.’

  I was joining him in his chattering nonsense; the paramedic looked at me, noting the bruises on my face. He wasn’t exactly judgemental but he clearly thought that I engaged in such practices myself.

  ‘Is that right, Brodie? Well sorry for me never listening when they mentioned all that to us at primary school–still, not for the first time, you’ve taught me something.’

  The medics had strapped the unconscious Frank to a stretcher and were carting him out of the room. Joe followed them to the ambulance.

  I remained behind. I didn’t buy for one moment the notion that Frank had done this to himself–had he also just happened to send me the graduation photo with a noose drawn round his own neck, and assume that Glasgow Joe and I would charge in like the cavalry bang on time?

  In contrast to the rest of the flat, heaps of clothes were scattered around and it was apparent that the killer had searched for something: whether or not they had found it I couldn’t judge. I searched through the mounds of personal effects. Beneath his bed were a pile of soft porn magazines. The type any normal male would be likely to have, the usual healthy dose of misogyny and dirty-mac-fantasy, but I had no time for sensibilities, so I raked through his clothes rather than wonder about his reading material–inexpensive durable sports clothes, two cheap suits, and a mountain of tatty shirts.

  Giving up on the mess, I flicked through his CD collection of classical music. It was apparent as I looked at it that Frank was anally retentive about order–he’d have a fit if he ever got home and saw the trashed havoc that had been left elsewhere by whoever had ransacked it. The CDs were filed according to composer and then alphabetically with reference to the symphony orchestra playing the piece. The only deviation glared out at me–Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits. Dolly smiled cheerily out at me dressed as a glamorous rhinestone cowgirl. I could ordinarily have been tempted to burst into a few bars of ‘Jolene’, but I just couldn’t imagine Frank Pearson singing along. Sticking out of the CD case was a receipt dated the day before. Inside was a plain unmarked disc I slipped inside my pocket.

  ‘Right–let’s go,’ Joe insisted behind me.

  ‘One last look–in case we’ve missed anything.’

  Wandering into the kitchen we both looked at the cheap Ikea mugs on top of the Formica boards. Two of them. I smacked the back of Joe’s hand as he went to lift the mugs, nursing his hand he looked at me resentfully.

  ‘Forgotten your speech to me already?’ I asked him.

  ‘There was no sign that the door had been forced so Frank had to have willingly let someone in.’ I pointed to the mugs. ‘He could have known who did this to him.’

  ‘Come on, Brodie–I’m meant to be the naïve one here given that I’ve never read any of your historical porn and I seem to be the only bugger who finds this all downright pervy, but has it occurred to you that Frank let this guy in because they’d arranged to do whatever got them going? Then the other bloke took fright when he saw it all going tits-up?’

  I lifted a plastic carrier bag and carefully placed the mugs inside. As far as the police were concerned this was an attempted suicide so chances were this evidence would be inadvertently destroyed anyway which, to me, justified withholding it.

  I looked at the clock–it was only just after 11a.m., but I felt as if hours had passed within Frank’s claustrophobic flat. I kept having flashbacks of him in S&M gear. Who had a motive for, what I was sure was, attempted murder? I couldn’t make sense of Jack Deans’ theories; who would the Enlightenment Society be trying to protect if they were behind this? I forced myself to walk down the stairs even though it felt safer to stay in Frank’s flat on the basis that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.

  As I got outside, I had a feeling that I was speeding fast down a one-way street, that I was almost to the place where I had to get to. So why hop off and try to run ahead? I turned my mobile on. Five missed calls all from the office and an angry text message from Roddie Buchanan warned me that my day was about to get a whole lot worse.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘If you stand on a crack, you’ll break your back. If you stand on a stone you’ll break a bone.’

  I whispered the childhood rhyme under my breath as I picked my way along the pavement outside the offices of Lothian & St Clair in Castle Terrace. I hadn’t been back, or in contact, since my meeting with Lavender. I had, of course, been in touch with the lovely Miss Ironside, but, rather than force flowers and fruit on me, she rightly guessed that what I needed most was for her to hold the fort. To be honest, it was what she did when I was there anyway. I heard a voice calling my name from the other side of the street as I headed towards the building.

  ‘Lizzie!’ I shrieked in delight as five feet two of perfumed loveliness hurled itself at me.

  ‘Brodie, darling!’ she answered, immediately informing me she was in middle-class luvvie mode. ‘God, you look shit.’

  ‘Really? That bad?’ I asked, fingering my various facial cuts and bruises.

  ‘Actually,’ she replied, ‘you look worse. You’re way beyond “shit”.’ Lizzie paused for dramatic effect as she leaned back to survey me. ‘Aye–definitely shite on legs.’

  She whacked me on the arm as she burst into gales of laughter. Looking around and seeing no immediate sign of Glasgow Joe, she asked, ‘Where’s that gorgeous man of yours then?’

  ‘He’s not mine, but he is around–he’s parking. Where have you been, Lizzie?’

  ‘You know where I’ve been. Bloody Milan. With bloody Luciano. I tell you, he’s as Italian as my arse. And that place! You been there?’ I shook my head. ‘You could buy fuckin’ Primark with what one handbag costs. But never mind my woes, what’ve you been up to, silly cow?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, Lizzie. Drink tonight?’

  ‘Abso-bloody-lutely, darling. And make sure that lovely bloke in a kilt is there!’

  She flounced off in the direction of the coffee box, Marni coat flapping, as I turned round again to face where I was going.

  The slabs on the street had shifted and moved through decades of frosty winters, and left an uneven, dangerous surface. At the height of press attention during the Kailash Coutts affair, Roddie tripped on a protruding stone falling head-first into a parked car, denting the passenger door. He waited until I had extracted an apology from the Glasgow tabloid before suing the council. The dunt on his head had been worth £10,000 to him; it wasn’t one of my finer moments, but it did remind me that Roddie always came up smelling of roses.

  In the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, I hesitated outside the firm’s offices. It seemed as if years had passed since I last entered its glass and marble hallway. I felt old as I watched a group of young Italian language students dressed in colourful cashmere wander up Castle Terrace, smoking, an
d talking excitedly, waving their arms in the air. Wearing jumpers round their waists and necks, it was apparent that the summer sun that sometimes frequents Scotland was too weak for their blood. A cavalcade of Fringe performers dressed like medieval mummers wound their way up the side of the castle, rushing to be on time to perform in the Royal Mile. A jester in a pointed purple and gold velvet cap carrying a stick with jingling bells stopped by me to adjust his spandex tights. I could have happily slapped them all. I was in a shit of a mood, and the city at this time of year couldn’t possibly help matters.

  ‘Are you going in, or are you just going to stand there–gawpin’?’ Joe sounded pissed off; probably because he was. He had dropped me at the corner ten minutes before and had gone to park the bike. I still hadn’t made it to the revolving door thanks to Lizzie. After a heated discussion he agreed to wait for me outside the office, but he didn’t like it.

  ‘Joe, I don’t need grief from you as well–this is hard enough. I’d rather do anything than go upstairs and see that slimy bastard.’ I said it quietly for fear of being overheard. Any number of young, and not so young, associates would love to report back and take my place on the headed notepaper. I had worked too hard to throw it away. A montage was running through my mind–as a young trainee, my heart had skipped a beat with pride every time I told someone I worked for Lothian & St Clair. The glory days were more than a bit tarnished now, or, more accurately, had certainly been shining a bit less brightly since Kailash came on the scene.

  I nodded to the security guard at the door who was bizarrely dressed as a Rear Admiral, and wondered, yet again, who would be reassured by that type of get-up? It was a formality anyway–I spent more time at this place than I did at home, so identification was not an issue. Waiting on the lift I caught my reflection in the gleaming brass door-frames. I hadn’t made the time to go home and get changed. If I was really stretching a legal technicality, I’d describe me as ‘highly informally attired’. In all truth, I was a mess in faded ripped jeans held up by my infamous belt. Too late I realised I had one of those bloody t-shirts on again, the ones I only seemed to buy when drunk, yet wear when sober–today’s informed everyone that ‘Good Girls go to heaven but bad girls go everywhere’. Was there somewhere I could buy good sense alongside white shirts and grey suits or perhaps I could just persuade Kailash to keep sending Malcolm round to my flat every morning with a pre-selected outfit?