everything is part of some hidden agenda, Jack. Sometimes, most times in fact, things are exactly as they seem.’
The house seemed to be stirring, an old cleaner, dressed in a floral crossover pinny, busily polished the brass nameplate, as if someone of importance was awaited. Not the master of the house obviously.
Surprisingly, Jack Deans had no interest in the comings and goings of the house. I was the sole focus of his attention. Scrutinising my face, he sought unknown confirmation of something. Satisfied, he nodded to himself.
‘You’ve a lot to learn.’
‘So you’ve said.’
Placing his tongue between his surprisingly white teeth, he paused for a moment. Thinking better of what he was about to say, he changed his mind.
‘If you see things as they are, and believe that’s all there is, you’ve led a sheltered life.’
I couldn’t deny it. He was right. I had led a charmed life to date. Although my father had forsaken me before my birth, my mother Mary McLennan moved mountains to give me the future she thought I deserved.
Mary was born in a fishing village in the north east of Scotland. It bears no importance to my life, except for one stroke of good fortune: its proximity to Gordonstoun, the school for the Royals.
Gordonstoun provides nine free places to children from the surrounding fishing villages. Mary McLennan lied and cheated my way into one after primary school was over. It wasn’t easy. I was an outcast, but, over the years as I saw my peer group take up soul-destroying jobs or sign on the dole, I was grateful for every time she shouted at me and made me study.
I never quite understood her passion, to push me up the social ladder, because she was perfectly content with her own life. It just wasn’t good enough for me. Mary worked two jobs to give me the finest. I promised I would repay her selflessness one day.
We were both cheated. If there is a God, He saw fit to deny her greatest wish–to see me graduate Suma Cum Laude from the Law Faculty at the University of Edinburgh.
Dying from the cancer running rampant throughout her body, doctors were unable to control her pain. Delirious with morphine, she repeatedly begged my forgiveness, crying over and over again that I was meant for better. Without seeing me graduate, she would never know that she had achieved what she dreamed of. I had reached my potential. I had succeeded. Mary was a humbling mother in many ways, and the root of my addiction to work, I freely confess in moments of introspection, came from being a slave to her ambition for me.
My reverie was shattered as Jack Deans grabbed me by the shoulders. He swung me round, directing my eye line to the car that had just pulled up outside Lord Arbuthnot’s home. An ancient two-seater Morgan roadster. Racy, with maroon and silver paintwork. The driver parked on the kerbside, directly in front of the house. Flouting the yellow lines he ignored the parking bays where we were. Obviously not an Evening News reader. Jauntily, a tanned old man jumped out with a spring in his step, which belied his years.
‘I thought I told you, Brodie,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve got to keep your eyes open.’
He paused before whispering:
‘I was wondering if he’d show up.’
Jack Deans was going to be tight-lipped about this one until he alone decided it was time to speak. This man was obviously important, not merely because of Deans’ reaction, but because of the aura he had about him and which even I could sense from my vantage point amongst the bushes.
My heart played knock and rattle with my chest. I knew this man from somewhere but I couldn’t say where. He stopped at the foot of the steps, his back unbowed with age, and his hair silvery white. We were feet from him, as I tried to blend in with the shadows of the hedge.
Turning in our direction, as if aware that he was being watched, he looked hard. Intense blue eyes pierced out of his tanned, weather-beaten face. If eyes are the windows of the soul, his was icy cold. At best he could be described as purposeful.
No resident of Scotland had skin like that. This man had clearly lived abroad for years–so how did I know him? Pedigree hung about him, like mist at dawn. Surely only mourners would darken the doorstep of the deceased today–but on this man, no trace of grief showed. Breeding had strengthened his upper lip.
Jack Deans was still silent as the man turned on his hand-made leather brogues and walked up the stairs. The door was open before he arrived. His appearance was evidently expected. The door had swung open, as if by some ghostly hand; the person opening it remained unseen. Deftly, the old man disappeared inside.
I felt a gnawing at my insides. I ached to know who he was. Shamefully, I was willing to trade anything. My voice was high and excited as I spoke.
‘Right, Deans, spill. If you want any inside information, scoops, whatever, now’s your chance. Tell me who he is.’
‘Calm it, Brodie. Don’t be so impatient. Or so desperate. It’s not your most attractive feature.’
Since childhood, I have found it impossible to believe that patience is a virtue. My right boot tapped a salsa rhythm on the cobbles beside my bike. When anxious, I fidget. Jack Deans was enjoying my discomfort, although he seemed at a loss to understand my urgency.
‘Impressive old bloke, isn’t he?’ he teased me as I nodded assent.
‘I’m surprised you don’t know who he is. He was a fighter pilot during the war…’
‘Well, I wasn’t around then, and an obsessive interest in military history seems to have passed me by,’ I answered. ‘So, if you could get your self-importance out of a place where the sun doesn’t shine, maybe it wouldn’t kill you to actually tell me who the old codger is?’
Jack Deans stared at me.
‘You don’t even recognise him?’
It was a question to which he expected an answer. I was not prepared to give him any insight into what the sight of this old man made me think–I didn’t quite know myself, other than the vague sense of recognition.
‘Of course I do, Deans. It’s just that I so enjoy our never-ending verbal sparring that I thought I’d keep begging you to tell me just for fun.’
‘It’s Lord MacGregor,’ he revealed.
‘The old Lord Justice Clerk?’
‘If you want to put it that way, yes. Personally, I think his role as father of the murder victim is more important.’
I wouldn’t have recognised him from court because he retired from the bench long before I was called. The only thing I knew about his career was that some still said he had retired too young and that the Law of Scotland had suffered as a result of his lack of influence.
The need to know how I knew him still gnawed at me. A traffic warden passed his car, stopped to look at it, then, magically moved on. I was still puzzling over this. Edinburgh wardens are mean and vindictive, and generally deserve their press coverage. I personally had never witnessed
