by Grace Monroe
‘Don’t be so bloody facetious,’ interrupted Jack Deans. ‘I know exactly what it is, and so do you–Joe’s right, it is bloody dangerous…it’s the bag that Kailash was carrying with her on the night Lord Arbuthnot died.’
‘But I thought it was nicked?’ Fishy said.
‘It was stolen…and I think your friend Moses Tierney took it.’ I looked at Jack accusingly relieved that Joe’s focus had been broken.
‘Well, if Moses took it–how did it get into Roddie’s possession?’ he replied.
‘I’d love to know, but in the meantime what’s concerning me more is why Roddie sent it to me instead of handing it straight to the police?’ My eyes scanned the room looking for answers, other than the obvious one I already had.
Joe was matter of fact. ‘Oh, come on, Brodie–there’s only one reason, and you know it. Withholding evidence, attempting to pervert the course of justice–you can take your pick. If the police find out that you have that bag they’ll throw the book at you.’
‘Let’s take Roddie at face value,’ I answered. ‘Maybe there’s something in this bag that he doesn’t want the police to know about Lord Arbuthnot.’ There was something clandestine about rifling through another woman’s bag, and I didn’t like it. Some psychologists, and psychics, make a study of a woman’s personality dependant upon the contents of her bag. Kailash’s was obsessively neat and ordered. A woman who needed to be in control, the type who refused to let things go. A politically incorrect pink crocodile skin smaller purse held her make up, a tatty, locked five-year diary, and her mobile.
Grabbing the phone, Jack Deans switched it on and rifled through the address book. Like a basset hound with a scent, he would keep going until he found whatever he thought he wanted. His heightened focus grabbed my attention. Even Fishy stopped to watch as Jack’s intuition told him he was onto something. This shrewdness was the ingredient that had once made him great, I suppose–for my sake, I hoped it would come back and stay pretty bloody sharpish.
‘Christ, I’ve got it!’ His hand tightly covered the mobile protecting his source as usual. I placed my hand over his and pulled, hard. My grip was broken by a third hand removing my fingers from Jack’s.
‘Stop your nonsense–I need you to look at this now.’
Digging his fingers into my arm, Patch pulled me across the morgue to his computer.
The others followed, and we crowded round the computer screen vying for space, jostling to see over Patch’s shoulder. As we watched him bring up the images on screen from the disc that I had found in Frank Pearson’s flat, we held our collective breath. Fire flushed through my body, as I took in the images before me. My stomach rose to meet my throat, and then I was cold through and through, chilled to the bone.
Laura Liddell lay in the top left hand corner of the photograph.
Armless and legless like a grotesque Venus de Milo. A dissection process was well under way. In the centre of the photograph stood a small boy, aged six or so, taking in every detail. His large eyes were extraordinary, already shaped by the sadistic scenes he was witnessing, and I wondered how such a boy would turn out.
Joe was tapping the screen furiously. ‘Maggie Liddell was wrong. It’s not a girl who’s missing–it’s a boy. If he’s still around, Brodie–we have to find him.’
And I knew exactly where to look.
TWENTY-NINE
‘Are you going to plead?’
The Advocate Depute’s voice sounded whiny and insistent, resounding around an almost empty Parliament Hall. It was the last thing I needed to hear at this time of the morning. For the centre of the entire Scottish legal system it was depressingly deserted. Our shoes clattered up and down the diamond patterned black and white tiles. The outsized ebony fireplaces that I love so much when lit had cold empty grates. Between the two hearths stands the entrance to the Advocates Library; one swift glance told me that it too was unoccupied. The painted South Window stood twenty feet above an elaborately carved wooden stall. It was from this place that Court Macers, like middle-eastern mullahs, called the participants to attend court. It too was abandoned. It wasn’t the first time that I had been aware of the religious connotations present in this building.
Underneath the South Window you can see through to court nine, and the start of the advocates’ boxes. There was no activity there either. The stone floor was laid centuries ago; it’s worn and uneven but it looked as if there would be no contributing wear and tear today. I was searching for signs of life, for as befits the Crown’s Prosecution, the Depute looked stern and foreboding. I needed to see others around to take away the feeling that it was not Kailash, but me, who was moving towards her doom. In the High Court of Scotland, an Advocate Depute puts on trial those accused of the most serious charges. In order to become a judge, you have to do a spell as an Advocate Depute, even if you have no background in criminal work. This was the case with Hector McVie, a senior silk, with many years’ experience behind him at the civil bar, and the man addressing me now.
The civil bar and the criminal bar are two different animals. Like oil and water they do not mix, and generally there is little love lost between them. Civil law books are dry and dusty, they contain no tales of rape, murder or incest, and civil advocates are in general like their books. That was Hector McVie’s world.
Characters who inhabit the criminal bar, in common with their clients have many vices: few of them attractive. One trait they have particularly in common is that they are hard; manners and civility have no place in their world.
Hector McVie was a gentleman. I was afraid he was going to add the word ‘please’ to his next sentence. He brought out the bully in me, and so I barked back at him.
‘No…she won’t plead…it’s too bad it was the Lord President who died.’
‘I heard you were going to cooperate.’ Hector sounded hurt, but he reminded me of my obligations.
‘Only an idiot would plead their client guilty to murder,’ I answered.
‘But you have no defence! Surely it would be idiotic to run a trial for which there is no defence?’ His ignorance of criminal work astounded me; to actually have a defence for your client’s actions is a luxury that is rarely afforded to us. We have to become masters of defending the indefensible. I bit my tongue and gave him the politically correct answer.
‘I have a defence.’
‘The Cluedo one? It was Miss Coutts in the street with a champagne glass?’ he mocked. Perhaps there was a side to Hector McVie which I hadn’t seen so far.
‘No!’ I was in barking mode again. ‘Actually, it was an accident.’
Hector stopped pacing up and down Parliament Hall and turned to look at me. Pulling his gold-rimmed, half-moon glasses down his nose, he stopped and peered. Laughter resounded gently round the Hall; he leaned against a marble plinth, his elbows nesting at the feet of Chantry’s statue of Lord President Blair. Holding his glasses in his hand, he wiped his eyes and smiled. I couldn’t look at him so I turned my attention to the magnificent statue. It was covered in cobwebs. In Parliament Hall there are a number of alcoves where, traditionally, judges sat to hear cases. These alcoves are now filled with sculptures of the great and the good, lawyers from centuries past. They all seemed to be deciding whether to have a wee laugh at my expense too.
‘You can’t be serious?’ Hector smiled indulgently at me. I liked him–as a matter of professional pride adversarial conflicts are rarely personal–but that could change.
‘I am serious. Kailash Coutts will not plead guilty to murder, no matter how much you wish this would all just go away.’
Horse-trading is part of the day to day business of court lawyers. It was obvious that Hector thought I was just waiting for a good offer.
‘What if I allowed her to plead to the lesser charge of culpable homicide?’ he asked.
It didn’t look to me like a bargaining point–it looked like desperation. I was beginning to see just how much Hector–and others–wanted this trial to disappear. In ne
gotiations it’s never good to let the other side see how desperate you are to settle, but to be fair to Hector he had obviously been told that we were on the same side. He was having his strings pulled, and undoubtedly knew that the same puppet masters had been speaking to me.
The prosecution and the College of Justice were keen to avoid a trial in order that Lord Arbuthnot’s reputation would remain unsullied. Perhaps they were even hoping to erect another marble monument to a dead Lord President. The Crown Office should have chosen someone else. If Hector had been a little more experienced and promised me a lenient sentence, then I might have given him what he hoped for: a simple promise to put his offer to my client. Instead I merely said that I would see him in court–not out of any misplaced sense of loyalty to Kailash, but because I wanted her to go down for murder for a very long time. There had been times when I had felt she and I were on the same side, but the Stockholm Syndrome moments had passed, I was pissed off with her for not telling me everything straight away and I wanted her to know that I wasn’t her lap dog. As I left the court, I also had to admit to myself that, on top of everything, I hadn’t forgiven her for the anxiety she caused me over the Roddie Buchanan scandal.
Face to face time again. The journey to Cornton Vale prison seemed interminable. The M9 was full of small-engined cars pulling lumpy caravans to the Trossachs. I got no joy from riding Awesome, despite it being the first road trip we had attempted since the accident. It felt good to be riding again, but–with the misplaced guilt of the single woman–I was conscious of the fact that I had barely given my beloved bike a second thought since Joe took care of it. I made silent promises to Awesome that I wouldn’t be guilty of neglect again. I was too preoccupied with my imaginary plans of shining and polishing Awesome in a dewy-eyed Utopia that I didn’t have the time to reflect too much on my imminent showdown with Kailash.
Finally, I arrived and parked the bike. I didn’t pay much attention to the barbed wire on the fence before I signed in and asked that Kailash be brought out from her cell.
I chose not to sit down in the small, sparse interview room. My battered bike helmet was placed on the narrow Formica table, and I paced with fists clenched so tight that when I finally released them they ached. The muscles in my jaw were unyielding and I could feel the pulse in my neck pounding. The door opened. Kailash was ushered in, wearing a white silk sari–again her guards accorded her the utmost courtesy.
The sari rustled as she moved. Kailash reminded me of Proteus, the sea-god herder of Poseidon’s seals. He had the ability to shape shift at will, he knew all things past, present and future but Proteus was unwilling to tell what he knew. Kailash was reinventing herself, and it was difficult to look at the modest, sedate woman before me now, and see her as leather clad dominatrix. She was a great actress, I’d give her that but I wouldn’t be taken in by her. I kept telling myself she was nothing but a manipulative hooker who generally got what she wanted. She wasn’t the only one–if I colluded with the Enlightenment, or some unknown men in grey, then it was because at this moment I wanted to. I was playing to my own agenda.
As Kailash sat down, she looked at me and uttered one word: ‘Why?’
I ignored her and placed her mobile before her. She picked it up in her still somehow beautifully manicured hand, and, as she read the text message, her face momentarily turned grey.
Meet u as arranged. Alistair.
‘It was sent the night he died,’ I reminded Kailash. ‘You lured him to his death.’
I could feel beads of salty sweat forming on my top lip and I became uncomfortably aware of how I must look to her. I was practically foaming at the mouth, whereas she had regained her composure almost instantly.
Placing her mobile on the table, she again asked me the question:
‘Why?’
I stared at her blankly, but noticed that she had taken care not to give me the phone back. I wondered: if I made a grab for it, which one of us would get there first. In my heart I knew that she would–she’d need dexterous hands in her profession.
‘Brodie, I have asked you a question. Why are you upset by this text?’
‘Because you lied to me,’ I snapped back. ‘I asked you if Lord Arbuthnot was a client and you said he wasn’t.’
‘I will repeat myself then, Brodie–Alistair MacGregor was never a client of mine.’
I was reminded of President Clinton’s reply when asked about Monica Lewinsky. ‘I did not have sex with that woman.’ Everybody else in the world considers a blow-job sex, but life and death are in the details. I was after the spirit of the truth from Kailash, and I wasn’t getting it.
‘That’s a lawyer’s reply…you’re covering your back. Was he a punter of anyone you employed?’
‘Brodie, if it will appease you–I will confirm I have never known Alistair MacGregor to pay for sexual favours.’
‘Why should I believe you–you denied any prior knowledge of the man?’
‘Brodie, I think if you centre yourself you will recall that you never asked me if I knew him, you were only interested in whether or not he had ever been a client.’
She was a condescending bitch when she chose to be.
‘You assumed that a woman like me could only be acquainted with a man like Lord Arbuthnot if I was his whore–in my line of work I am no one’s whore, they are all my bitches.’ She smiled for the first time in a long while.
Kailash had missed the point, I was angry with her because she had made a fool of me. I would have presented her defence even if I had been aware of a prior relationship with Lord Arbuthnot, but I was not inclined to forgive her given that others knew of a bond between them. I’d bet good money that Jack Deans knew. Kailash sat serenely at the table writing in a pale pink raw silk notebook (yet another personal possession she had managed to retain) while I stood silently looking at the wall.
Kailash handed me a note. The script was immature indicating a lack of formal education. I needed all my time to find the killer; I did not have the energy to fight this hopeless case. Lack of sleep had dried my eyes. I tried to blink as reading the note was difficult on many levels. Aware that Kailash was watching me, I cleared my throat, and read its contents out loud.
Rulers see through spies, as cows through smell
Kautilya, Indian philosopher, third century BC
‘I may not have a law degree,’ said Kailash, ‘but I am by no means uneducated. My father’s people were civilised, and had 360 different ways to cook potatoes when in your society there were no potatoes to cook.’
I flushed; the heat surged from my toes to the roots of my hair. Like a naughty child I had been found out–Kailash always seemed to be able to put herself above me no matter what the game was. She needed to do that for her ego, and I needed to avoid it for mine. Every time we met, she managed to make me feel worthless, ill-dressed, gauche, uneducated, less… What little grace I had left made me shift from foot to foot. My mother’s voice admonished me to apologise for jumping to conclusions, but Kailash and I had too much history for that. She stood up and stealthily walked round the table to face me, her feet made no sound on the mottled grey linoleum but her sari rustled.
Another enemy had been made; there was no way that I could see to re-establish the client agent bond. I decided to jump before I was pushed.
‘Get yourself another lawyer, Kailash.’
I moved to pick up my helmet and walk out when she issued an order.
‘Brodie–I want you in this trial and THEY have ordered you to be an Amicus Curae. As a matter of interest–what did they promise you?’
She passed by me so closely, that I could detect the individual ingredients in her old fashioned scent. Rose oil and lavender. Any herbalist would maintain that it was a soothing combination; I would beg to differ. I felt no comfort.
Placing her forefinger under my chin she lifted it up.
‘Ah…nothing but the red robes would tempt an ambitious girl like you.’
I wanted to tell her that it
was my mother’s ambition she was reading not mine–then I remembered my response to Roddie’s blackmailing judicial appointment suggestion and I wondered who was really pushing me on–the ghost of my mother or the true me? Perhaps they weren’t as different as I’d always tried to convince myself. ‘Did they tell you what they would do to you…if you didn’t go along with their plans?’
‘No.’
‘They left it to your imagination…what a group of very powerful men would do if you betrayed them.’
I nodded, betrayal sounded such an ugly word. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.
‘That’s good, Brodie, because I too will leave it to your mind’s eye to conjure up my punishment for you if you betray me again.’
Squeezing my shoulder very tightly, she led me to the hard-backed chair and had me sit down. Sitting on the corner of the table so that I had to look up to her meant the dice were in her hands.
‘Is that a threat, Kailash?’
‘No, it’s a choice.’
‘It doesn’t feel like I have many options.’
‘There are always alternatives, Brodie–even when faced with inevitable death you can make a decision to be courageous, to die well.’
THIRTY
My heart felt as if it had stopped–was she talking about me, telling me to die well?–but my face was emotionless. What did one more threat matter? Kailash failed to notice my indifference as she continued her monologue.
‘Besides, choice is an illusion…in most circumstances we opt to narrow it down. Too much freedom would unsettle you.’
My choice was not to die well, but to live well, and to do that I would have to be smarter and a damn sight more wily than I had been to date.
Kailash rose from her seat like a cat and moved from the corner of the table to stand behind my back. I could only feel her presence, which was immense. Her breath was slow and measured in my ear; mirroring her steady heartbeat, there was no outward sign of stress.
